The CUE humanoid robot rose to prominence after it appeared at a half-time show of the basketball event at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
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At seven feet in height, and around 125kg in weight, it is the size of most prominent basketball players around the world, but in Tokyo, by successfully making a world-record 2,000 consecutive shots for assisted robots, free throws and three-pointers proved to be too easy for the AI-powered humanoid.
Now, per CNN, its development team at Toyota is attempting to make it dribble and pass with similar perfection to its shooting prowess.
The feat at the Olympics was achieved by the CUE3, which uses a censor in its chest in order to judge the angle, height, and weight of shot, required to make a shot from any position on court. After finding shooting promise in the amateur project, CUE1, from the free throw line in 2017, Toyota put its resources behind it. The subsequent versions of the robot went into perfecting the version seen in Tokyo, quite literally a shooting machine, but going one step further to have “the same range of motion and flexibility as humans”, is a tall order according to Tomohiro Nomi, the leader of the CUE’s development team.
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This video of a robot playing basketball in Japan is mindblowing and is going viral 🙀 pic.twitter.com/zrlbpeLAy1
— Tansu YEĞEN (@TansuYegen) June 28, 2022
The robot’s latest version, the CUE5, is considered far more advanced. Its sensors and cameras can map its position on court, and with new, advanced movement in its hands, it can also map the distance between its hands and the ball, allowing it to dribble. “We would like to try shooting from even further distances in the future – for example, from the 3-point line on the opposite court or from the free-throw line,” Nomi said.
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The next goal is to premiere the next iteration, CUE6, at the Japanese B-League All-Star game next year, where it will be put through a host of challenges that go beyond just basic dribbling and shooting, but also anticipation and passing. The development team will be introducing it at a home game of Alvark Tokyo, a B-League team, as early as December, but have a host of challenges they will need to go through to develop it to that level.
Nomi believes the advancements seen in the CUE will be relevant across the robotics field, not just for basketball, and that innovation that will allow robots to exactly mimic human movements is not too far either.
