Rather than any magic or mathematical algorithm, the robotic hand in fact cheats its way to victory by ‘seeing’ which of the three hand-shapes its human rival is about to choose before making the form of rock, scissor or paper accordingly.
Using advanced motion sensing technology, the robot’s analysis is so quick as to be imperceptible to the human eye.
According to the Ishikawa Oku Lab, who claim to have designed the automaton as an “example of human-machine cooperation systems”, the recognition of the position and shape of the human hand takes just “one millisecond”.
One millisecond more and the robot plays its hand – so far coming up trumps every single time.