Alex and Harrison Chen are brothers, engineers, and ping pong enthusiasts who went to different parts of the world to study. Growing up they were constant ping pong competitors and while living apart were unable to find people to play with at the same skill level. The brothers wanted to build a training device that could develop their skills and be able to mimic any player's shot or skill level. They developed Trainerbot, the smart ping pong robot, and are currently running a Kickstarter campaign to fund production tooling and components.
Trainerbot has a relatively small footprint, with a 160 millimeter base diameter and 320 millimeter height. The device was designed to fit in a backpack and weighs 1.2 kilograms.
The robot looks professionally designed and built and functional at this late prototype stage, but more impressive to me is the app that allows users to control Trainerbot. The bot can be programmed to hit any zone of the table, different spins, and different trajectory controls. Different drills can be set up with thirty different shots and then uploaded to the community so others can play against your virtual opponent. Advanced players can also adjust the speed and frequency of the shots.
Alex and Harrison were accepted into the February 2016 Hax Accelerator cohort and the campaign page has a great development section showing different levels of prototypes, prototype builds, and a video of a previous revision of Trainerbot against a human player.
Trainerbot is a good example of engineers developing a consumer product for an extremely specialized application. Working through an accelerator has led to a polished looking prototype model and a well done glossy professional Kickstarter campaign.
My favorite sound bite of the entire campaign video is "I've actually played ping pong robots before..." I would eventually like to see more technical specs for the robot, especially the controller, and hope that at some point the app becomes open source. The campaign ends on July 16, 2016 and if successful first units are expected to ship in March 2017.
