Yeah, but his D is weak if you ask me.

Since the dawn of mankind, humanity has endlessly toiled to put leather or rubber balls measuring about 30 centimeters in diameter into baskets roughly 10 feet in the air. It’s a process made even more nightmarishly tedious by the fact that the baskets have holes in the bottom, causing the balls to simply fall through and need to be thrown into the basket once again.

Nations around the world have devoted their strongest citizens to this mission and the USA alone has poured millions and millions of dollars into getting those cursed spheres into their designated baskets. However, no matter how much manpower and resources we throw at this problem, it continues to plague us.

▼ Watch as the crowd cheers in the misguided hope that perhaps… this time… the ball will stay in the basket, only to be let down 150 to 250 times a night.

However, a new weapon in our relentless war on baskets and balls has emerged thanks to automaker Toyota. Their team of engineers is tirelessly working on a robot that is independently both physically and mentally capable of b-balling as well as, if not better than, any human.

The team is constantly improving this robot, which they call CUE, and has gotten it to a point where it can dribble as well as find and pick up balls by itself. It still can’t walk but it scoots around on wheels attached to each foot, which is a great way to get around traveling calls.

Toyota has set milestones for CUE in the form of Guinness World Records. The first was in 2019 when it earned the Most Consecutive Basketball Free Throws by a Humanoid Robot at 2,020, a number at which they just decided to stop at because it was getting a little tedious. The second record is their recently earned record of Farthest Basketball Shot by a Humanoid Robot at 24.55 meters (80 feet and 6 inches).

▼ A video showing the record attempt and history of CUE

The goal of CUE is to make it move in the same way as humans, so rather than simply having a basketball cannon, it must use its arms, back, and legs to make shots just like a person. It’s also freethinking in that it can adapt to environmental conditions and if it misses a shot it can independently adjust and analyze for whatever abnormality caused it.

For example, when making the longest shot, the robot itself decided on the best form to use. However, on its very first attempt, it failed to sink the shot.

▼ Oh, snap! Someone call Caterpillar because we got us a brick-laying robot!

This setback required some simple (for CUE) adjustments and the second shot was nothing but net.

The final challenges for CUE will likely be making it truly bipedal and then teaching it to mutter obscenities under its breath when the ref doesn’t call what was clearly a foul. Perhaps they can get help from that parkour robot that people keep hitting with sticks and we can get another step closer to the future envisioned in Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball.

Source: Guinness World Records, YouTube/Guinness World Records
Top image: Guinness World Records
Insert image: YouTube/Guinness World Records
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