Researchers develop robo-golfer that makes perfect putts

By Dean Murray via SWNS

Watch out Tiger Woods - a robo-golfer could be set to make you look below par.

Researchers have developed Golfi, a self-learning robot able to make perfect putts.

A team at Germany's Paderborn University has used data-driven and physics-based methods to have the robot autonomously learn to sink the ball from an arbitrary point on the green.

But rather than sending the club-welding bot onto the golfing circuit, Golfi has been created to demonstrate how robots might assist humans in daily life.

The study said: "With the aid of autonomous robots, the everyday life of many people should be made easier in the near future, e.g., by supporting work in the care of elderly or physically impaired people. For this, a prudent action of the autonomous robot is essential.

"We have included these aspects in our research work and want to develop them further in the context of an autonomous golf robot as an illustrative example.

"For an autonomous golf game in the area of the hole, some challenges have to be overcome, e.g., sophisticated environment recognition and precise actuation.

"Even for skilled humans, putting is not always successful. To be able to meet these requirements, in this paper we use both powerful data-driven methods and established physics-based methods from the control engineering context.

"A hybrid approach is extremely beneficial to optimally utilize the advantages from both areas."

The system works by calculating the positions of Golfi, the ball, and hole as well as the shape of the green surface.

Watch out Tiger Woods - a robo-golfer could be set to make you look below-par. (Paderborn University via SWNS).

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The physical situation is captured by 3D camera and combined with data crunching to calculate the required stroke velocity vector to putt the ball into the hole.

From the camera recording, the green surface is approximated and model-based training data is generated by simulating 3,000 training strokes from random points at random velocities within the valid range of the green.

However, even robots cannot perfect golf just yet, with engineering source IEEE Spectrum reporting that Golfi is successful "6 or 7 times out of 10."

Also, pro golfers do not need to worry just yet as Golfi has one other drawback - it has not yet mastered hilly terrain.

The team said: "Without hills on the surface, Golfi performed well in moving autonomously to the ball and hitting it towards the hole.

"In our work so far, we have limited ourselves to a situation where the green has no hills, but we have already demonstrated the feasibility of our method for a hilly green in a model-based manner.

"The next step is to evaluate these results on a hilly green in our laboratory. For this purpose, the drive unit may no longer be sufficient and the fine traversing unit may be used as well."

The study, "Autonomous Golf Putting with Data-Driven and Physics-Based Methods," has been published by Annika Junker, Niklas Fittkau, Julia Timmermann and Ansgar Trächtler