How do you always ensure a world record darts? With a newly developed control technology from the Vienna University of Technology, which is being tested using a robo dartboard.
It looks a bit surreal when you shoot an arrow at the high-tech dartboard of the Vienna University of Technology: silently and at lightning speed, the disc whizzes along the wall while also rotating – so that the arrow hits the dartboard exactly at the desired point. All you have to do is shoot the arrow roughly into the right part of the wall – and you’ll achieve a result in a pre-programmable way that even the absolute elite of the darts world will envy.
It only takes 250 milliseconds
This is made possible by an innovative system of traction cables, image recognition and high-precision control. Multiple cameras record the trajectory of the dart and calculate within microseconds where the dart will land and how the target must move to catch it exactly in the right spot. Precision cables, controlled by a sophisticated mathematical model, guide the drive to the right place – all in about 250 milliseconds.
“Dart is an excellent application to demonstrate the performance of our newly developed cable robots,” says Prof. Andreas Kugi from the Institute for Automation and Control Technology at the Vienna University of Technology.
Georg Feiler, Michael Schwegel and Ulrich Knechtelsdorfer, three members of Kugi’s team, are mainly responsible for the dartboard and advanced controls. “The cable robot enables very dynamic movements – especially rotations, which in previous designs were only possible with a lot of extra design effort,” explains Kugi.
Amateurs suddenly dart like professionals
The precision of the new technology is demonstrated in the video (see above): Three different people hit the triple-20 fifteen times in a row – even the world’s leading top professionals barely succeed. (The triple 20 is the most valuable pitch in darts – unlike, say, archery, where you want to hit the center.) Flexible ropes instead of rigid rods “It would be much more complex with rigid joints than with the light flexible ropes”, says Andreas Kugi.
His team first had to perform complex mathematical analyzes to see how the highly dynamic control of the rope pulling dartboard could be achieved as quickly and precisely as possible – and then this mathematical model had to be combined with image recognition and implemented in a real device.
“What I especially like: Our dartboard shows that the current automation possibilities mean that processes can be completely rethought – why throw precisely when you can also position the dart precisely?”, says Andreas Kugi. “If you approach such tasks with a little creativity, amazing technological solutions can be implemented that you may not have thought possible at first.”
Source: Krone
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