Play Air Hockey Against This Phone-Controlled Robot

As a kid, there were two hockey games that we all loved — Nintendo’s Blades of Steel and air hockey, of course. While you could always play against the computer on your NES console, the same could not be said for the latter…

That all changed in 2014 when Jose Julio decided to solve that problem by creating an air hockey-playing robot using some readily available 3D printer parts, an Arduino, and a PS3 camera suspended above the table.

He has now taken that design one step further by upgrading to a smartphone for its brain and eyes. The rest of the system includes NEMA 17 stepper motors, stepper motor drivers, a custom ESP8266 shield, belts, bearings, rods, and other 3D-printed components.

An Android phone running the Air Hockey Robot App monitors what’s happening on the table, making real-time decisions based on the puck’s location and its predicted trajectories. As seen in the video below, the robotic paddle can move along two axes — side to side and up and down.

The smartphone’s camera is looking at the playing court. The camera’s captured data is processed in real-time by the smartphone. Detecting the position of the puck and the “pusher robot” (and according to the current location of all the elements on the court), your smartphone makes decisions and commands the robot what to do via Wi-Fi.

Your smartphone essentially becomes anaugmented reality device, showing predicted trajectories and the position of all the objects involved in the game.

Love this as much as we do? Not only can you see Air Hockey Robot EVO in action below, you can find more on the project here and its code on GitHub.