Let's Play Catch!

I saw an article on popsci today: http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-11/watch-awesome-robot-play-catch-better-your-dad. The page has a small video of a humanoid robot that has a hand which can catch a ball. This is an amazing development  in technology, because catching a ball needs precision of where the hand is held, and the robot must also be able to calculate the final position of the ball within milliseconds, not to mention moving the arm fast enough. This version of the robot uses an external camera with an ultrasonic sensor of some sort to locate the position of the ball in three dimensional space. Perhaps the same camera can be placed in the head. If that were done, the robot would need to calculate the speed based solely on the distance that the ball is from itself, an would also need to know the exact location of it's own hand. This calculation could give the robot a sense of artificial self acknowledgment, only seen in animals. I think that all microscopic life forms are a kind of machine which is pre downloaded with code, however when self acknowledgment comes in to play such as in larger animals, the animal can learn. Seeing its own arm and moving it is a very premature intelligence, however it would be the first step to creating an intelligent and learning robot. Going back to the actual hardware, the robot's limbs move fluidly, and precisely. Making effective legs that can run and jump do not appear very far off in the future. 

Just this year, I joined the robotics club in Homestead High School. Over the past two months, I have learned some things about the robots that we build, however I quickly found that my technical knowledge on the subject was extremely small. I hope to educate myself and readers through this blog.