Robot Basketball hoop is the ultimate “fun/useless” machine

Shane Wighton build a “robotic” basketball hoop always in the perfect trajectory of your shot. It performs real time calculation and visual recognition using a Microsoft Kinect to idenfity the ball .. it works so well that throwing blindfolded will result in a hit !

Shane was already popular with his “scary” Barber Robot that talks while cutting  y̶o̶u̶  your hairs .. and now he surpassed himself building the most “fun/useless machine” ( depending on the point of view ) 🙂  .

 In this video I show you how I devoted several weeks of my life to realizing a basketball hoop that makes your shot go in even if you totally miss the hoop…. it was a lot of fun, and quite a bit more challenging than I was anticipating. Hopefully you enjoy it 🙂

The robot can move around using pulleys and belts in all the directions to match your shot and catch the ball. The system is inspired to COREXY 3D printers concept .

It was build using various tools including custom metal parts using  plasma cutter, carbon fiber bars and 3D printed gears and 3D Depht Camera like Microsoft Kinect and several hours of math & custom C# Code. Good Job! 🙂

You can check the StuffMadeHere YouTube channl here