A team of engineers working for the Japanese Volleyball Association have developed what they call the "block machine" -- a robot volleyball machine that's capable of competing with the best volleyball players in the country. The machine consists of three pairs of arms that can block even the toughest spike, providing a valuable (if frustrating) training tool for Japan's top athletes.
To be sure, the robot volleyball machine isn't capable of playing an entire game of volleyball against its human competitors. The arms that make up the machine are on horizontally aligned tracks, so they're only capable of moving along the length of the net and blocking shots. Nonetheless, they block well. The machines can move 3.7 meters per second -- far faster than any human athlete.
Volleyball-Playing Robots
Japanese Engineers Have Developed an Elite Robot Volleyball Machine
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