Five roboticists at National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan have trained an actuated arm to play basketball. That alone wasn’t worth a mention here until they skinned a toy seal and had the manipulator arm wear it like a Snuggie. So creepy. This may be a ploy by the Baby Seal Clubbers lobby (totally a real thing), because seeing that metal claw popping out of a stuffed seal’s mouth makes me want to club a seal immediately.
The roboticists say the robot seal sinks the ball 99% of the time, and we’re guessing it kills humans the other 1% of the time. Hit the jump for the video which has earned the hoops-playing robot seal the official GammaSquad Seal of AAAAAAAAAAAA!pproval.
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/aFl-9W8x-uI?fs=1&hl=en_US
[Video via the aptly-named IEEE, which is also the sound I made watching this.]