A 1982 chess computer plays itself by mechanically moving the pieces [video] | Hacker News Reader

A 1982 chess computer plays itself by mechanically moving the pieces [video]

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80 pointsDavidSJ24 comments

Let's hear it for the mechanical engineers of the 80's!

Also in the 80's, Star Wars toys used small DC motors with fixed gears that rubbed against rigid pieces of plastic to make "laser" noises.

Let's hear it for mechies in general: servos and solenoids and LEDs replaced the levers and linkages of the past.

Yes!! And things like Teddy Ruxpin, that penguin ladder thing and erector set/lego techniks!

there are modern products in this niche, and there is huge interest. the market certainly seems to be there (regium tried to defraud people for almost a million dollars i believe was the kickstarter sum before they got shut down).

there is squareoff [0], with new products currently in development (swap / neo)

then there was regium, an elaborate scam on kickstarter [1]

now there is phantom [2], which hopefully is not a scam. they at least posted some engineering details on hackaday [3]

squareoff has chess.com support, hopefully with lichess support coming (they are promising it, but has not yet happend). phantom claims working lichess support and to work on chess.com support

[0] https://squareoffnow.com

[1] https://www.chess.com/news/view/update-on-regium-chess

[2] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wondersubstance/phantom...

[3] https://hackaday.io/project/179268

Phantom is an elegant little system. They want to sell it for $670, which is a bit high, but will probably sell.

If it works I'll get two. Miss playing chess with my old roommate from college. Online works, but it would be too cool to have it sitting still on my desk only to get distracted from work by a piece moving.

The app seems a bit optimistic though.

What's your concern with the app? Looks pretty standard as far as chess goes, other than causing pieces to move on board.

This reminds me "El Ajedrecista"[0]. A mechanical chess player from 1912, built by the spanish engineer Torres Quevedo[1].

There's a short video demonstrating the workings and seems very similar[2] (article in Spanish).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ajedrecista

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_Torres_y_Quevedo

[2] https://elpais.com/elpais/2019/03/06/ciencia/1551836790_1601...

For anyone curious, this exists in a modern form as well these days. One popular producer is https://squareoffnow.com/ (I have no affiliation)

I was going to ask if this was the one that Techmoan reviewed a while back, but in fact it seems as if it was a modern version of the same idea (the Squareoff that others have mentioned already): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQLOj-TylGg Of course the modern one requires an app ...

Blitz games from the last decade, robot vs very strong players:

Alexander Grischuk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgDGSN8GTKc

Ex-world champion Kramnik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51b10w3nTS4

Daniil Dubov https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tClnz1d4yww

Brave to be so near a massive robotic arm that could probably crush a person in a split second!

Very cool. Especially the code that moves pieces out of the way as other pieces jump over them or are removed from the board! A lot of programming in that.

I enjoyed watching White castle, with both king and rook off center as one passed the other.

Magnets is how I imagined this would work, but I wasn't expecting a physical arm underneath. I wonder if it would be possible to make this without any moving parts, with just an array of electromagnets underneath which turn on and off to move the pieces. That would make it a lot quieter.

That was my first question, but then I realized you’d need more than just one magnet per square, as it’s possible for a knight to capture something without an exit path.

Or you would need some path finding software. To figure out what pieces you’d need to move first, to be able to remove the captured piece.

And I wonder what this board does when you promote a second queen?

I'd like to see this. Sounds difficult. You'd need very strong magnets and a very low friction surface. Perhaps tiny omni-directional steal wheels on each piece... Oops, those are moving parts.

It would also enable the movement of multiple pieces at once (for captures and make-room moves).

Magnet based approach would make captures cumbersome, an arm that lifted and removed pieces would be more natural during captures.

Squareoff handles it by first having the captured peice walk slowly off the board, then the capturing piece moves into its place; Looks rather immersion breaking to me.

To be clear, I had this device when I was a kid, and it does use magnets; it is just that it had to move the magnet with motors underneath the board.

You can also see it doing captures in the video: it does them the same way you say that "Square Off" ("rip off"? ;P) one does: by first moving the captured piece off the board.

I found a video of someone pitting the Grandmaster vs. the Square Off (which won, though of course that seems obvious given that we have gotten much better at gaming AI in the past few decades)!

https://youtu.be/SWy9z3WKNyg

FWIW, I honestly don't remember it being this loud, and am wondering if it is because it is old or because I am old ;P.

Brookstone had one like that

I want one but wow... they seem to be quite rare. One on Aus Ebay and another on US Ebay. Going for around 500USD.

Would love get one that's in decent shape and build an interface to internet chess.

Poor thing has to move the other figures around so the knight can move. I have lots of sympathy for this machine.

How did it recognize the moves performed by the human opponent?

The pieces are moved magnetically apparently. Which means the pieces must be ferromagnetic.

Now this is just speculation on my part, but if the pieces are magnetic, they can have a different polarization for black pieces from the white pieces. So during a human move, the computer would observe:

1. A field losing polarization when a piece is moved away

2. Another field gaining polarization when the piece is moved to it or changing polarization when a piece was captured

This is enough information to reconstruct moves with multiple involved pieces. Even pawn promotion, though limited to captured pieces, can be tracked assuming the off-board fields are monitored too. One limitation here would be that the player is not allowed to slide their pieces, because the computer would not see when the piece was released and could respond too soon.

Looks from the other video like you have to press the square you're moving from, and to.

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