This Dartboard Moves On Its Own To Always Give A Bullseye

Ever fancied yourself becoming a sharpshooter? If not with a gun then maybe with a bow? For most people, that will forever be a fantasy and the closest thing they'll be able to get is playing darts. And even then, majority of the population suck at it. Not unless you have this one of a kind "smart" dartboard that will automatically move itself so that you will always hit the bullseye. No matter how bad or how drunk you are.

OK, so you're practically cheating, but the exhilarating feeling of hitting the target is just authentic. The "Automatic Bullseye-moving Dartboard" is a product of the obsession, persistence, and knowledge of Mark Rober, who spent 7 of his 9 years at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) working on the Mars Curiosity rover. Rober (rover?) now spends his time sharing his love for science and DIY projects on YouTube.

The goal for the dartboard might be simple, but its execution is more complex, not to mention expensive. Six Vicon motion capture cameras are used to capture the movement of a a dart with tiny reflectorized stickers. The movement of the dart is used to calculate and then predict its trajectory, which is then used to move the dartboard itself.

That second part is probably the most complex part of the system as far as construction goes. To smoothly move the dartboard in four directions, six motors are used, each with a spool of fishing line that pulls the board in one direction while loosening the line in the opposite direction. The impressive part of all these is that the process, which includes the computation and moving of motors, needs to happen in less than a half a second.

As you can probably guess, this is not a DIY project one can easily replicate. Rober says it took him a good three years to make this dream a reality, though he admits that part of that was because he initially wanted to develop his own mocap system. And although he did end up using a commercial system instead, Vicon cameras are not exactly something you can afford on a meager hobbyist budget.