CIOInsider India Magazine

Little did the humans know that a peculiar basketball player would score a slew of deep-three point shots during the halftime of the Men's Preliminary Round of Group B game of the US versus France, Tokyo Olympics 2020.

This 6’10” tall cyclops and terminator vibe filled figure is CUE, an AI basketball robot created by Toyota ™ and their reason for inventing this humanoid bot is for 'sheer fun'. But it was more than his appearance that surprised fans, as CUE stole the hearts of many with his long range throws.

To top it off, CUE’s shots bagged a Guinness World Record for 'Most consecutive basketball free throws by a humanoid robot (assisted) shooting 2,020 shots', in honour of the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympic Games 2020.

CUE may seem like a real-life version of typical evil robots from sci-fi movies, but he left an impressive mark right on his first time at the Basketball court.

His creators had completely kept their lips zipped, working on this marvelous humanoid and now it shows the volume of their work in the form of CUE. Besides, CUE proved that games are not only meant for humans. Whether or not there may be a future Humans versus Machines match, but it’s good to know a thing or two about this new member who has already captivated fans.

What is CUE Really Made of?
It's unclear which version of CUE stole the show, as there was a CUE sporting No.95 jersey sinking baskets, and a CUE 3 and CUE 4 wearing a No.93 and No.94 jersey. Well the reason for the number nine explained by his creators is, number nine is a homonym for ‘cue’ in Japanese. His creators say that, ‘cue’ here implies how technology can serve as a ‘cue’ for great things to come.

CUE stands six feet 10 inches tall weighing about 200 and is described as a ‘shooting guard’. His creators say that CUE takes about 15 seconds to shoot his shot.

CUE has sensors fitted to his torso that helps him calculate the distance to the goal and the angle of the hoop with his robotic limbs. Once he’s got that figured out, CUE positions his robotic arms to send the ball flying into the air at just the perfect angle and with enough propulsion to score a point, or three.

CUE was Meant to be a Freetime Project?
That’s right, CUE was at first meant to be a freetime project for Engineers at the Toyota research and development lab in Japan. Researchers at Toyota started working on the first version in 2017 and had a functional prototype in six months. It took humans to move it into place during its previous incarnation. The next year, the robot won a shootout against professional basketball players from the Alvark Tokyo team.

It only made nine successful shots out of ten on its first public effort. Toyota executives saw the project's potential and gave the crew two additional years to work on it full-time.

However, the engineers had seldom any experience in AI before they could bring CUE to life. This indeed proved to be very challenging, as they attempted to demonstrate machine learning through human-like intelligence.

But CUE is not the only bot at the games, in fact, Toyota also developed machines that move humans to retrieve balls in throwing events.

Then there’s an audience favorite, a remote-controlled ‘Tiny Bus’ bringing the match ball to the 50 meter line during the Rugby 7s opening between Fiji and Japan. It's all part of a larger AI endeavor that the company kicked off with a $1 billion investment in 2015.

But CUE not faces harsh comments about his peculiar appearance, but his capabilities as well.

Elon Musk's Take on CUE
It was only a matter of time before Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, got his hands on the video and explained the advantages of computers over humans.

A Twitter user captioned the incident of CUE nailing the throws and tagged Musk in their tweet after sharing the video. The user wrote, "AI can perform things that only humans could do before”.

Then Mr.Musk stepped in to explain that, “Computers are ridiculously more accurate than humans. How long would it take a person to render even one frame of a recent video game at low res?” the tech tycoon wrote before adding, the computer will run at 120 frames per second in high resolution. It's not a competition”.

A lot of mean tweets and comments kept coming, mostly pertaining to CUE’s slow actions and slow long release as well.

The demonstrations are intended to pique people's interest. A lot of them have become viral videos. They also serve another purpose. Scientists are encouraged to compete in the lab by robots that demonstrate AI-powered agility. The resulting inventions seem to attract the attention of investors, making them more likely to appear in the actual world.

However, if CUE wants to kick it with the stars of the Games, he will have to work on his delayed release.

However, his goal appears to be spectacular, as he sinks one from the logo.

While the competition between the world-class athletes and the countries they represent is entirely a celebration of human accomplishment, at least one robot will be allowed to have some fun as a reward in 2021. Although, he may have a lot of negative backlashes about his appearance, and his slow reflexes, but his shots are powerful. As it’s hard for a human to shoot the ball accurately into the basket at such a long distance.

There are other robots also captivating the audiences as well, but the spotlight seems to be mostly on CUE.

Tokyo Olympics is on a whole different level this year, with Google and Snapchat making creative ways for fans to enjoy the games than just watching them. To technology developers showing their technological skills with their robots on the games.