backboard

3 Articles

Third Time’s A Charm For This Basketball-Catching Robot

September 9, 2020 by 20 Comments

We all know that version one of a project is usually a stinker, at least in retrospect. Sure, it gets the basic idea into concrete form, but all it really does is set the stage for a version two. That’s better, but still not quite there. Version three is where the magic all comes together.

At least that’s how things transpired on [Shane Wighton]’s quest to build the perfect basketball robot. His first version was a passive backboard that redirected incoming shots based on its paraboloid shape. As cool as the math was that determined the board’s shape, it conspicuously lacked any complicated systems like motors and machine vision — you know, the fun stuff.  Version two had all these elaborations and grabbed off-target shots a lot better, but still, it had a limited working envelope.

Enter version three, seen in action in the video below. Taking a page from [Mark Rober]’s playbook, [Shane] built a wickedly overengineered CoreXY-style robot to cover his shop wall. Everything was built with the lightest possible materials to keep inertia to a minimum and ensure the target ends up in the right place as quickly as possible. [Shane] even figured out how to mount the motor that tilts the backboard on the frame rather than to the carriage. A Kinect does depth-detection duty on the incoming ball — or the builder’s head — and drains pretty much every shot it can reach.

[Shane] has been doing some great work automating away the jobs of pro athletes. In addition to basketball, he has tackled both golf and baseball, bringing explosive power to each. We’re looking forward to versions two and three on both of those builds as well.

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Robotic Basketball Hoop V2

May 19, 2020 by 12 Comments

A few weeks ago, [Shane Wighton] created a basketball backboard which made it impossible to miss a shot even remotely close to the hoop. As a passive device, though, the backboard had its limits. Shots with tremendous velocity wouldn’t go in, and (like most backboards) it was missing facial recognition software. So he got to work on a second version which solves those issues, and takes a more active role in the game.

This version is flat, and looks largely unassuming until a game begins. The flat backboard is mechanized and includes a camera, so incoming shots can be analyzed in real-time while the backboard is moved into a position to direct the ball into the net. Or, since it does include facial recognition, the backboard can always send the ball away from the hoop, ensuring that [Shane] always wins basketball games no matter how many shots his opponent takes.

If you didn’t get a chance to see the original, we featured that a while back, and it’s truly a wonder when you learn about how much analysis went into creating the shape. The new version is even more impressive, doing all of that math in real time, and we can’t wait to see what [Shane] comes up with next.

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A Basketball Hoop That Never Lets You Brick

April 20, 2020 by 25 Comments

With none of the major leagues in any team sport currently meeting, sports fans have a huge void that has to be filled with something. For [Shane Wighton], the machine shop is the place to go when sports let you down, and the result is this basketball backboard that lets you sink every shot every time.

When we first saw this, we thought for sure it would be some overly complicated motorized affair that would move the hoop to catch the basketball, sort of like the dart-catching dartboard we featured some time ago. And while that would be awesome and somebody should totally build that so we can write it up, [Shane]’s hoop dream is a lot simpler mechanically, even if the math needed to determine the proper shape for the backboard was complex. He wrote software to simulate throws from hundreds of positions to determine the shape for the board, which ends up looking like a shallow elliptic paraboloid. The software created a mesh that was translated into CNC tool paths in Fusion 360, and the backboard was carved from blocks of softwood.

The first tests were disappointing; instead of landing every shot, the board seemed to be actively denying them. [Shane] had to puzzle over that for a while before realizing that he didn’t account for the radius of the ball, which means the centroid never actually contacts the backboard. Rather than recalculate and create a new backboard, he just shifted the hoop out from the backboard by a ball radius. With that expedient in place, the setup performed exactly as calculated.

[Shane] may have taken the long road to hoops glory, but we appreciate the effort and the math lesson. And the fact that this ends up being the same shape as some antennas is a plus.

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