With the potential to revolutionise everything from busking to children’s parties, a researcher named Raffaello D’Andrea at ETH Zurich has built a simple sensor-less machine using four strategically placed paddles that are able to juggle four balls in the air with surprising accuracy.
The Circular Cloverleaf, as the latest iteration of Raffaello’s Blind Juggler machine is called, is especially impressive because there are no cameras or sensors to keep track of the positions of each of the bouncing balls. They’re only kept in motion, and in the air, by the position and movement of the paddles.
So over time the balls’ positions slowly drift which does result in an eventual miss, but seeing the machine work as well as it does is still magical because it’s completely dependent on the laws of physics instead of code or artificial intelligence.
[Blind Juggler via IEEE Spectrum]