Computers, Robotics and Foosball

What a fantastic combination. I'm surprised I didn't try to come up with that one myself ;-) Apparently I'm too late, the University of Freiburg's (German city of about 200,000) Computer Science Department has developed KiRo, the table soccer robot:

KiRo is a completely autonomous table soccer playing robot: using a camera it perceives the playing field and, dependend upon the current game situation, it decides how the rods under its control should be moved.

Even better is that they commercialized it under the name StarKick. Now if you have a broadband connection go check out some video of what it's like to go up against a robotic foosball opponent. ;-)