Robochess the chess-playing robot competes with compact simplicity
June 13, 2010
Although robots have been competing in chess tournaments since the ‘70s, they’re usually large, industrial-looking arms that are separate from the chess board itself. Compared to these robots, Robochess the chess-playing robot is more suited to the scale of your living room. Robochess is fully integrated into its chess board, and shows what can be possible on a small scale with a small budget and a large amount of dedication.
Robochess was developed by Ebrahim Jahandar, who is currently a student in electrical engineering at the University of Isfahan in Iran, when he was in high school. The robot is just one of many projects that Jahandar – who is not yet 20 years old – is working on.
Using about 6,500 lines of C code, Jahandar programmed the robot to recognize its opponent’s moves, analyze its next possible moves, decide on the best move, pick up the piece and make the move, and finally display the result on an LCD screen. The bottom of the chessboard is covered with magnetic sensors, and each chess piece also has a small magnet, allowing the robot to track the pieces.
The video below shows Robochess competing against a human opponent. More information can be found at http://www.jahandar.ir/Chess-Playing-Robot/.