Watson, the IBM supercomputer robot, isn't the first of its kind to take on humans in a game they invented. Over the years, plenty of robots have competed against humans in various games from Jeopardy! to poker. Here are just a few examples of man vs. robot.
Long before Garry Kasparov and chess took center stage, Arthur Samuel, an early IBM developer, created one of the first ever self-learning programs and an early demonstration of artificial intelligence. Samuel created a computer that was able to play checkers. In the early 1960s, Samuel’s computer played and beat one of America's foremost checkers players at the time, Robert Nealey. Since then, other developers, including a group from the University of Alberta, have gone to create their own checkers-playing computers. The University of Albert version won multiple world checkers championships against human opponents. Wikipedia CommonsUntil now, this was perhaps the most famous example of man vs. computer. In February of 1996, Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion at the time, played a match against IBM’s Deep Blue, which could be considered a predecessor of sorts to Watson. Kasparov beat the chess-playing robot four games to two. In a 1997 rematch, Deep Blue avenged its earlier loss beating Kasparov three-and-a-half to two-and-a-half. Kasparov was deeply upset by the loss and accused IBM of cheating. IBM eventually dismantled Deep Blue. Wikipedia CommonsIn July of 2007, Polaris, a poker bot developed by the University of Alberta, competed in a match against professional poker players Phil “The Unabomber” Laak and Ali Eslami. The event consisted of four duplicate matches, with 500 hands per match. In the end, Polaris tied the first round, won the second round and lost the last two. The next year, Polaris, which only played Texas No Limit Hold ‘Em, competed against six other humans and compiled three wins in six tries. ReutersIn April of 2010, San Francisco 49ers field goal kicker, Joe Nedney took on Ziggy, a robot designed by Michael Worry, a Canadian developer for an event called the RoboGames.The 14-inch tall robot was said to have the ability to not slice or hook the ball when it used its pneumatic leg lifter to boot it. However, while Nedney was nearly flawless in all of his attempts, Ziggy missed from 40 yards out and took five tries to make it from 45 yards out. ReutersEnhanced Automatic Robot Launcher or E.A.R.L., named after bowling great Earl Anthony, competed in a one on one match against Pro Bowling Association star Chris Barnes. EARL, a one-armed robot, has the ability to throw the ball 10 to 24 mph and can spin balls up from 50 to 900 revolutions per minute. It was designed by the U.S. Bowling Congress to consistently simulate any type of bowling style with an accuracy and consistency on the lanes that no human bowler could achieve. Despite this, Barnes, a PBA player of the year in 2007-08, defeated the robot by a score of 249-209. ReutersNow that his Jeopardy! stint is done, IBM has announced Watson will move on to medicine. The company announced an agreement with Nuance Communications, a speech recognition provider, to develop and commercialize Watson’s advanced analytics capabilities in the healthcare industry.WikipediaIt’s hard to tell where the battle of man and robot will head next. A group of researchers in Queen’s University in Canada developed a pool playing robot. Meanwhile, every year an event called RoboCup occurs, where autonomous robots play each other in a game of soccer. Along with soccer and pool, there will certainly be other sports that see robots developed to challenge human dominance. Reuters
