When asked how she ever learned to shoot pool so well, Rhoda Miller, the lifelike android played by the ever-sexy Julie Newmar, responds, “By computing the circumference of the spheres and the angles of trajectory plus the coordinates of the points of impact.” It’s a reasonable answer from a prototype robot built by the U.S. Air Force. It also establishes that Rhoda (aka AF 709) not only has the ability to learn new skills, but also that she will be able to play billiards nearly flawlessly (or, at least, until commanded to do otherwise by her caretaker, Dr. Bob McDonald, played by Bob Cummings).
The exchange described above is from the January, 1965, “Pool Shark” episode of the American science fiction sitcom My Living Doll, which aired for only 26 episodes on CBS. In the episode, Rhoda is recruited to hustle a wealthy pool shark in order to erase a debt indirectly owed by Dr. McDonald. Though Rhoda has never played pool, her ability to perfectly apply geometry and physics to the game enables her to shoot without error.
This is established by making a series of obligatory, but nonetheless eye-popping, trick shots, including the classic six ball “butterfly pool shot;” the famous two balls in the same pocket masse shot from The Hustler; a “railroad shot” (using the cue sticks as a railroad track); and a “paper bag shot,” in which the ball is hit with just enough momentum to enter a paper bag, flip it over, and exit the other side into the pocket. The full episode is available to watch on YouTube.
My Living Doll is hardly the only show to reduce billiards supremacy to physics and geometry, though it may have been the first. A quarter century later, the 1990 “Pool Hall Blues” episode of Quantum Leap enabled Dr. Sam Beckett to play masterful pool by relying on Al’s super-computer, which revealed the necessary angle for hitting every shot. Similarly, in the 1999 “Pool” episode of The Pretender, the prodigy Jarod becomes an ace billiards player through his “familiarity [with] the architectural theory of dynamic symmetry, as well as Descartes’ theory of coordinate geometry.”
What was, and remains, truly original about the “Pool Shark” episode of My Living Doll is embodying the geometry and physics aptitude inside a robot. Though it was pure science fiction in 1965, today, the notion of creating a robot that excels at pool, much the same way that IBM’s Deep Blue has become the definitive grandmaster of chess, has captured the imagination of scientists and inventors around the globe.
For starters, there is Deep Green, an industrial robot created by engineers at Queens University. The robot is “equipped with a cue and hung over a standard coin-op table. A digital camera reads the scene below and the robot’s computer brain compares it to 30 pre-stored images of an empty table, using the differences to decide where, and what color, the balls are. From there, the robot can nominate a ball and pocket and slide into action.”[1]
Then the robotic wizards of Willow Garage taught a Personal Robot 2 (PR2) to shoot pool. Created in response to a hackathon, the engineers spent one week teaching their robot hot to identify the pool table, locate a shot, and make it. They built it using their open source hardware platform and the ROS open source software library, which allowed them to adapt the existing FastFiz billiards software.[2]
Finally, there is the Munchen Robot, created by scientists from the Technische Universität München in Germany. This dual-armed robot relies on a “camera mounted above the table and advanced physics engines to assess and detect the best way to approach a game of pool and execute the perfect [shot].”[3]
Though these robots all shoot an impressive game, none are indefectible, making them a futuristic far cry from the can’t-miss android Rhoda Miller. In fact, it is only when Dr. McDonald “forces” Rhoda to adjust her shot by two degrees, does she inevitably miss. Julie Newmar clearly appears to have had fun making some of the trick shots, but her slapstick sense of humor really shines when she misses and must “act angry,” resulting in myriad forms of cue stick destruction.
Though the short-lived series was cancelled when it didn’t deliver the desired ratings, the show did yield Newmar her second Golden Globe nomination. Moreover and more important, with the abandonment of My Living Doll, Newmar was freed to assume the iconic role of Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman, in the 1966 Batman TV series, forever imprinting and arousing the minds of adolescents everywhere.
[1] “Video: Pool-Playing Robot is Unbeatable,” Wired, 9/21/09
[2] “Willow Garage teaches robot to play pool in one week,” SingularityHub, 6/16/10
[3] “Billiard playing robot able to rack up eight balls with precision hustle,” Metro UK, 6/6/11
