Robot Chess - One-armed gambit
My early-eighties dream of owning a Chess playing robot arm has finally been realised, but is it as relevant to me now as a new BMX?
Right, with this one done and an empty diary for the rest of the week I’m planning to move straight on to making another video tomorrow. Ideally I’d like to get a few simpler videos completed so that I build up a buffer to tide me over when things inevitably go wrong, as they so often have done. The best laid plans…
As for Chess computers both these and Lava lamps are now struck from the list of topics for future videos. Hopefully there are still plenty of other things left to talk about. We’ll see.
I hope you’re well - take care and have a good week.
UPDATE: Realised I’d messed up by not talking about the camera earlier in the video, so I’ve added in a few seconds of talking about the camera and also took this opportunity to tidy up a few other odds and ends.
Comments (59)
I'm surprised there's no feature to have the robot to prep the game pieces in the starting position.
Unusal apparatus... and I guess this is the place to go for this... hehe. Thank you. Looking forward to the Oddcast
I actually really like that this one can just read the state of the board and carry on from whatever you've done, without getting confused and losing track like some of the previous that only track moves from a known start would. It does smack a lot of "we had plans to do a lot more stuff in software but then discovered good software is actually hard", but more respect to them that they still shipped a functioning standalone product, and you don't *need* to rely on "oh, maybe open source hobbyists will finish it off for us".
Very odd, I never got the usual email about this. Only saw there was a new video because it popped up in my Latest Subscriptons list on YT.
I wonder if you’re suffering the same issue I had with yahoo mail which just seemed to bin all the Patreon emails before they got anywhere and resulted in me changing my email provider.
Stop being mean to that poor robot 🥲. They'll remember you when they take over!
I thought I'd be the first to mention the clever choice of music, disguised in instrumental form, but I'm way down the list :) Still nice to know there's others who can spot this '80s classic.
I was a tad surprised at how many people immediately got the connection - I guess we’re all getting on a bit, but it also must have been played extensively around the world.
Would you be interested in making a video on perfume shaped Sony Walkman line-up? Fiio is going to release their own "Homage" product called Snowsky Nano and I really like the idea of them.
I’ve got a Sony player from that era BNIB not one of the perfume bottles but one I always appreciated the look of. I really should get around to it.
The spare set... ideal gift for someone you hate who you know loves chocolate.
Just catching up with this. My knowledge of the rules of chess are on a par with my comprehension of industrial spot welding... non-existent. I only learnt how to play draughts last year! Took me a while to recognise One Night In Bangkok. You should have worn a white suit and thin tie like Murray Head in the video!
A white suit in a house with a fluffy black cat would be a brave/foolish move.
When you made an illegal move I was fully expecting it to move your piece back!
It really should. It’d be better at remembering what piece I’d just moved to where, than I would.
Hopefully someone can mod it to speak like Wargames. "How about a nice game of chess?"
A round of applause for the video title!
Anyone else get the Chess reference to the music? One night in Bancock from the musical "Chess". Needs a bit of polishing up design and software wise, but i liked it.
Was it intentional that you hid part of the "ON AIR" sign so it read "ON AI" instead?
I'm not that clever.
The last few videos are ok but not amount technoans top 10 🙃
Almost made me want a chess robot. With a bit more polish this would be great I feel. Also, a funny coincidence that I have been listening to the "One night in Bangok" song recently and then this appears. And has that song fainly in the background. Really fits for sure!
When taking a piece I think it should first move the 'taking' piece up close to the victim before removing it from the board (proper chess terms there!). Promising to see this realised, but a shame about the execution - perhaps there's hope for a v2. 0
The face and sound effects remind me of the Anki Vector.
Yes I’ve seen this idea used a few times now, I know nothing about programming but I’m wondering if it’s a ready made ‘plug-in’ (not the correct term).
Although the blinking eyes are cute on their own, I think I would find them quite distracting if I'm deep into a serious game of chess as I never am.
I’m glad you mentioned the colors. The developers didn’t really spend much time on graphic design- which is a shame. Because that can cover up a lot of other imperfections. What is up with that shade of green? Dreadful
My only hypothesis is that digital cameras see green the best of all the colors (read about bayer filters) (that's why they're using green screens now, and not blue screens as they used in the film era). Maybe it helps with the piece detection.
I'd have thought it would undo any illegal moves by itself.
It should have disappointed robot head movements when you make an illegal...or poor...move
boy, am I charmed by this thing. agree with Tunix comment that its a shame its unfinished. (I still kinda want one tho.) also bonus points for the close-enough MIDI version of "One Night in Bangkok."
It's a shame that this product feels so unfinished. They actually got a lot of things right. It accurately assesses the state of the game, reliably picks up the pieces and moves them across the board, and it appears to know and correctly apply the rules. It's as if they solved all the hard problems and then fell short at the final stage of polishing. The most irritating quirk is that the device continues the game even after the player has made an illegal move. The (multicoloured?) screen is merely used to display a pair of highly stylised eyes in an attempt to convey some kind of... personality? They could have done more with it. The questionable choice of colours and materials adds to the overall tacky impression.
That robot is awesome. It just needs to double as a bartender that argues about taxes and existential dread
I'm enjoying the music that's nearly but not quite "One Night In Bangkok". Did the original get a strike? Also, I do hope they produce one of these that's dressed up like the Mechanical Turk. Great video as always!
Any track that you remember being played on the radio will hit a content match - with MIDI the worse it gets the better it is for not hitting a composition match.
Ah yes, the selfcontained AI robot completely disconnected from the internet, all LLMs and datacenters. The only thing more annoying than the deluge of AI slop we are drowning in is apparently every company in the world slapping on the term “AI” onto its products from coasters to cars. Loved the music in this episode, my 80s robot dreams were activated. Its a shame how garish the actual product is though. Combined with those nonsensical programming decisions really sinks it.
Using a robot arm? 10/10. Cute animations? 8/10. Kickstarter with an actual reward that was actually shipped? 10/10. Fun video? 10/10. As for something I'd buy? 1/10.
Interesting video. This is definitely something I would have loved when I was a child in the 80s. In many ways it looks like a 1980s view of a chess computer. Totally agree the way it plays on after illegal moves is a major flaw but I do like the fact that it doesn't require the internet.
P.S. Good music choices.
This was partially discussed in another comment but I wonder if each piece has an rfid chip in the base that the playboard is reading or if it's really just the camera in the head that sees the different piece shapes. Might be fun to glue some magnets onto your own chess pieces to see if they work.
Just guessing but I'm pretty sure it's just camera based. There are open-source toolkits for realtime image recognition and if you train the model, you can run it easily on something like a raspberry pi. For example, I just bought a dash cam that can recognize cars, pedestrians, lanes in real-time completely offline and doesn't cost more than 150 EUR. RFID would make this more expensive and complicated when you already have the robot arm with a camera. Would be interesting to know if it works in the dark or very low light.
Totally agree with your assessment. It's too bad if they've abandoned the product. It seems like a good working beta version, that needs to be refined into the final release. The false move and checkmate responses seem like relatively easy firmware updates. Design-wise though, maybe they should increase the price point a bit and class up the board with better materials. It feels a bit chunky and Fisher Price plastic if their target is adults. Except Fisher Price toys can take a beating and this is already peeling apart in careful hands!
Well, the idea is nice, it's definitely not rocket science anymore nowadays, but as you said: it looks unfinished to me... And rather ugly! And big mistake: it seems to take only the position for playing black, there should have been at least another connector on the other side of the board to make it play white... But now I get the idea: can I make the professional industrial robot I have at work play chess? :-P
I would buy it, thanks for a great video. Reminds me of a chess game I had on the c64 when it was losing would do an illegal move
This brings back an amusing memory: About 10 years ago I played a chess match against a fellow educator, back when I was still working. He was a dedicated player, while I thought I wasn’t too bad. He check-mated me in what seemed a half dozen moves: totally humiliating, me in front of a few students. That’s the last time I saw, or had any desire to pursue the noble game of chess. Good video, though…
Great video as always, Mat. I suppose it does do what it's supposed to... Your backstory about wanting one of these devices for decades is similar to something that I wanted; when I was about 11, the Stylophone hand-held synthesiser was all the rage. All my friends had them, and I was DESPERATE to get hold of one but sadly, never did. About 40 years later, they reissued them, so of course, I bought one. It was exactly as I remembered. I played with it for about 10 minutes, put it back in its box, and never looked at it again. I'm sure there's a moral in there somewhere, but I'm dashed if I know what it is. Have a great week ahead!
at first I though it was going to be a video about this one https://www.chessnutech.com/en-uk/pages/chessnut-move
That’s a price I wouldn’t be happy spending.
Appropriate musical selection, "One Night In Bangkok" hopefully doesn't hit any content matches.
If it does I’ll have to replace it with some music that makes even less sense.
Might be worth adding something to explain how it keeps track of where the pieces are - I know there's a quick reference to the camera at the end when talking about the colour of the board, but I expect there'll be more people like me that are interested in that side of it.
If I knew I’d tell you. I know it’s got a camera, but that’s as far as my knowledge of it goes. I’m sure we can all guess the rest, but it’s just that, a guess, I don’t want to try and pretend I know about something that I really would just be surmising.
• Fun and entertaining video. But where's McMullet? • One night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble. • I think it's adorable. But be careful once it goes rogue into Battlebot mode. • Its artificial eyes are judging you. • I really would prefer the robot attached better to the board. • The only way to make it exciting is to build it out of stainless steel, and make it spout taunts when you do ridiculous moves. I like it. Understated but companionable. Take care 🤍
I’m just not really feeling funny at the moment, I get years like that.
Another great video. It would be nice if it moved the pieces that were illegally moved back where they came from.
I agree that would be the best way to handle it.
I'm trying to come up with a humorous and friendly way to tie in together these three characteristics of the proprietor of this shop of curiosities, our very own Mat: A non-chess player who sincerely wants an automated chess-playing device? A non-piano player who sincerely wants an automated piano? A non-bicycle rider who sincerely wants to get into Bicycle Moto Cross (BMX) racing? Okay, I had to look up BMX, so I guess what he really meant was the type of quadrophonic sound system rather than a bicycle race. 🙂
All the kids in the 80s wanted a BMX bike, but they aren’t as much use to the average 55 year old in 2026.
I hope to see McMullet making another appearance 😁