You can't win rock-paper-scissors 100 percent of the time -- at least not if you're human. Even those well-versed in rock-paper-scissors strategy lose sometimes; that's how we get enough interest for rock-paper-scissors championships. But there's not an RPS savant in the world who can beat the newly unveiled Japanese "Janken" robot at the game.
Named after the Japanese version of rock-paper-scissors, Janken will win the game against a human every time it plays. How? The robot uses high-speed computer vision to see which symbol its human opponent's hand is forming and then, quicker than the eye can see, forms a winning symbol in response.
Think you're fast enough to beat the robot? Well, Janken can detect your movement in just one millisecond and make its own shape in just 20 milliseconds. For reference, it takes 40 milliseconds for the human eye to process a moving image; so we're pretty sure that no matter how good at rock-paper-scissors you are, you can't win.
Take a look at Janken's sweet moves and frighteningly fast gameplay in the video below:
h/t BBC