Golfi, First Robot Able To Play Golf Without Human Assistance

Golfi, arobot who can play golf. (photo: dock.IEEE Spectrum)

JAKARTA - Robot technology is now far into human life. Starting from delivering food to home, serving coffee, and even removing cancer tumors, robots can already do it impressively.

Now the robot has also taken over the golf course, being able to direct itself to the ball and even putt.

Thanks to the 3D camera, an impressive robot dubbed Golfi can find golf balls and play them on its own before taking shots.

The camera uses an algorithm to detect hard-coded objects, scan areas, and find balls.

The IEE Spectrum reported, once visible, requires a snapshot, which is then sent to the model to stimulate 3,000 random shots from various positions and starting points.

This information is used to train neural networks that can predict exactly how hard the ball will be and in which direction the ball will be sent.

The robot considers the data from the camera, which details the prisoners rolling in the field and how heavy the ball is. He then coated his putter with the ball in the right position and fired.

Golfi, which works by minimizing the amount of 'time-consuming interactions' it needs, was created by doctoral studentika Junker of the University of Pederborn in Germany.

Despite the incredible ball-placeping skills, the robot was not created to boot pros like Tiger Woods from the golf course, but to show how powerful hybrid robotic designs are, by combining physics-based models with machine learning.

"This is like how professional golfers often train their punches on the gridiron the day before they play," said IEEE while explaining his robot at the International Conference on Robotic Computing in Naples last December.

During testing, Golfi did some drive-overs, but when this didn't happen, Golfi was able to put up to 70 percent putt on an indoor green field two square meters wide.

"We're trying to combine data-based and physics-based methods and we're looking for good examples, which everyone can easily understand," Junker said as quoted by the Daily Mail.

"This is just a toy for us, but we look forward to seeing some of the advantages of our approach to industrial applications," he added.

After looking into the robot, Noel Rous Saat, a golf coach with a PhD degree in motor learning was impressed with Golfi. "The most impressive part for me is that golf robots can find balls, see holes, and move themselves into positions for accurate stocks," he told the IEEE Spectrum.

You can also transfer it to other issues, where you have knowledge of the system and can model its parts to get some data, but you can't model them all, "said fellow robot maker Niklas Fittkau.

Golfing, not the first golf game made. Previously, LDRIC robots were also able to do hole-in-one from a significant distance on the golf course at the TPC Scottsdale Arizona field in the US in 2016.

The LDRIC (abbreviation from the Launch Directive Robot Intelligent Circuit) is widely used in the golf industry to test new technologies, has been able to swing golf clubs perfectly.

It also has the ability to replicate errors on average golfer swings, such as feared hooks and slices, so the club's manufacturers can develop more regretful curbs.

However, Golfi is the first golf robot that doesn't require humans to set the ball in front of it and program it to do the right swing.