Can Your Free Throw Compete with This Art Piece's?

It is always interesting to look the activities that robots excel at compared to humans and animals. Humans are good at creativity, adapting to new situations, and performing in unexpected situations. Robots, on the other hand, are very good at performing repetitive actions that can be clearly defined ahead of time. Basketball is a great example of this. A robot would be really bad at playing the complete game against a human, but would be far better than a human at free throws. JBV Creative shows that with this basketball sculpture.

JBV Creative designed and built this sculpture for an art gallery in his area, which gave him a deadline to finish the project in time for the gallery opening. From the beginning, he knew that he wanted to do something related to basketball, but wasn't sure of the approach he wanted to take. He experimented with some different ideas, all while perfecting the basic throwing mechanism. That is a small robot arm driven by a single stepper motor. When activated, the stepper motor quickly rotates and moves the arm linkages to fling mini basketballs. JBV Creative chose to use stepper motors because his work with silent drivers and are easy to rotate by very specific amounts.

With the throwing mechanism able to sink shots reliably, JBV Creative needed something to do with it. He settled on a what looks a bit like a diorama of a full basketball court, with a hoop at either end. Below each hoop is a throwing mechanism that can sink a free throw through the hoop at the opposite end. The court, hoops, and throwing mechanisms were all either 3D-printed or laser-cut.

The idea is that this kinematic art piece throws balls endlessly back and forth forever. After going through a basket, the ball falls down a chute into the throwing mechanism below. That throws the ball back to the other side and the process repeats as long as the machine has power.

An Arduino Nano board monitors small switches below the throwing mechanisms to detect the presence of the ball. When it sees a ball, it first increases the count on a little digital score board, then waits a moment and before activating the arm.

We aren't quite sure what statement this art piece is supposed to make—if any. But it is cool to see in action and is sure to generate more interest than your average painting.