Tennis Robot

Japan-based Astro Research is responsible for this crazy tennis robot. The days of the automated ball server are numbered if this catches on, since it swats the balls at you with a real tennis racket instead of just shooting one out at you like an assault rifle. On the other hand, what’s the dif? What this is really good for is a bit of coffee break fun watching the oddball promotional video, which opens up looking like some kind of Haliburton R&D promo for a space weapon, complete with a stately intro shot of the earth. As in, the planet really needed this. Astro Research spent a huge amount of money creating the Swing Shot, but couldn’t scrape together the Yen to hire a real tennis player to test out the machine? These tennis dorks would get better results if they were hitting the balls on a golf course.

[From Astro Research]