I mean, that’s easy enough if you’re trying to catch the ball with your face. Usually that’s not the goal, so you’ll be standing slightly to the side or the object is moving toward your stomach. ;)
Even then, that’s discounting the whole image analysis part of the equation, which your brain does dozens of times per second with incredible accuracy. Your waste bin example would have had to do enough to differentiate the ball from the background, and that definitely qualifies as a complex algorithm.
ETA: also, closing your hand at the right time does require your brain to know how close the object is, not just that you’ve positioned yourself in its path.
![[Thread] Mental Math](https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/4a605b7b-7272-471f-ac11-37366ac7d8bd.png){kind=link}
I mean… there is nothing simple about the calculations involved in something like that lol. That’s like countless differential equations per second.
No, IIRC it was just : film the ball and repetedly do: “is the ball to the left, go left. Is it a little to the left, go little to the left” etc.
Like a PID but with only the P part. I don’t know if it makes any sense :-)
I mean, that’s easy enough if you’re trying to catch the ball with your face. Usually that’s not the goal, so you’ll be standing slightly to the side or the object is moving toward your stomach. ;)
Even then, that’s discounting the whole image analysis part of the equation, which your brain does dozens of times per second with incredible accuracy. Your waste bin example would have had to do enough to differentiate the ball from the background, and that definitely qualifies as a complex algorithm.
ETA: also, closing your hand at the right time does require your brain to know how close the object is, not just that you’ve positioned yourself in its path.
IIRC the imaging was just a black & white camera with the ball being black.
Detecting what is a ball is of course a whole other game, that I think was not the question. But if was then yes, that is more complicated.