Janken Rock-Paper-Scissors Robot Simply Can't Lose (VIDEO)

This Robot Has Ruined Rock-Paper-Scissors For Everyone

In a dystopian future world where our domineering robot overlords are giving us one final chance to win our survival, this is why we'll lose.

There is a caveat of course - it cheats.

It's really, really fast

Rather than being powered by some sort of witchcraft and somehow predicting a player's choice like (Derren Brown) Janken uses some hi-tech camera technology to determine an opponents move before they complete it.

The original Janken - the Japanese name for the age-old decision making game - would humiliate a human in only 20ms.

This one does it more or less instantaneously - one measly millisecond.

The robot has been developed by researchers at the Ishikawa Oku Laboratory in Japan and will have implications for a wide range of technology.

Janken's reaction times

Sethu Vijayakumar, professor of robotics at Edinburgh University, told the BBC: "These robots are really fast at reaction, but there are scenarios where even a millisecond's delay is not acceptable, such as accident avoidance or virtual stock markets.

"In these cases we need to combine high-speed reaction with high-speed prediction, using game theory and behaviour patterning"

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