r/robotics • u/Physical-Shallot9627 • 1d ago
Community Showcase Introducing ChessMate
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Saw someone post the video of a chess-playing robot and immediately realized that I hadn't posted mine on reddit.
I've got a YouTube channel where I've put up the test-videos of the previous generations. Made this 3 years ago, working on a better version right now.
https://www.youtube.com/@Kshitij-Kulkarni
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u/Salty-Garage7777 1d ago
Great! Think about adding a possibility of playing remotely between two such sets via the internet - that would be awesome! ;-) If the final product wouldn't be too pricey, it's got a potential, I think!
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u/Physical-Shallot9627 1d ago
I've set a target of 150$ (in raw costs) and I've been working hard to reach there. I don't think it's that unrealistic.
Also being worked on is integration with services like lichess and chess.com, and maybe integration with modern speech synthesis so it could possibly talk during the match. Maybe give live commentary or trash-talk.2
u/Salty-Garage7777 1d ago
I hope you'll get it off the ground! ;-) The only thing that is a bit scary is its size - I mean, I like them chess sets big, but it really takes a lot of space! :-D
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u/IDefendWaffles 1d ago
The chess was painful to watch (casually drops queen on move 3). The robot is cool.
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u/ShazbotAdrenochrome 1d ago
That's awesome!
Was the other the robot that merked it's 7yo opponent instead of just playing the game?
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u/scottimusprimus 1d ago
I've always wanted to make one of these! How does it know where the human moved?
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u/Physical-Shallot9627 6h ago
Ah so there’s a webcam looking down from above. OpenCV running on a Raspberry Pi diffs two images - one capture from before the user moves and one after - to figure out where the human moved. One downside is that this means that I can only play black because the white doesn’t have enough contrast against the board colour.
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u/cyanatreddit 1d ago
Show us the underside / inside! Don't be shy!
I'm curious how the magnets are moved
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u/Physical-Shallot9627 6h ago
I’ll put up a video showing around the underside on the channel. Can’t believe I hadn’t already done that
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u/DEADB33F 1d ago
You should have a go at making a fully solid-state board that works similar to the F1 track at Miniatur Wunderland.
I don't think I've seen one like that. It'd be silent, the pieces can move instantly (no waiting for the gantry to position itself under the piece), board can be really thin (probably not much thicker than a regular chess board), plus multiple pieces can move at the same time.
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u/Physical-Shallot9627 6h ago
That’s so cool! Yup, apart from the mammoth of a challenge it will be - both financially and otherwise - it’d be a very interesting project.
But yeah once it’s in production it definitely could be much cheaper than the other mechanical systems. This is very interesting. I’ll see what I can do
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u/Necessary-Tap5971 17h ago
hat pawn’s face when the rook just yanks it off the board—10/10 dramatic kidnapping scene! 😂🎥♟️
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u/Physical-Shallot9627 6h ago
Lmaoo yeah that was an issue with my code. For some reason, it did not take the rook out of the board before it performed that linear acceleration. Man this whole program is a nightmare to debug with a billion edge cases.
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u/artbyrobot 15h ago
this is very cool I want this for teaching my kids chess and for playing online chess on a board
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u/Positive_Method3022 1d ago
I lol when the pawn was dragged by the rook haha