The Technological Limits of the Wii Remote

Factual Questions
1

This is begging for a Mythbusters experiment, but until then:

Suppose I channeled Grant Imahara and built a robot to play Wii Bowling for me. Just for shits & giggles, I crank up the power on the robot’s bowling arm to the degree that it swings forward at 2X the top speed that I could deliver. Would the Wii:

  1. Translate that into a really powerful roll, and knock the pins down accordingly?

  2. Roll the ball at some kind of default maximum speed built into its programming?

  3. Say hi to Opal?

  4. Fail to recognize that a roll had taken place (meaning the Wiimote moved too fast for the sensor to pick it up)?

Furthermore, at what speed would the Wii just give up? 10X top human speed? 100X?

What if Carlos Zambrano were to throw a pitch on the Wii Baseball game?

2

Note that this could also depend on the Wii software and what limits it places on the inputs. For example, if the Wii accelerometer has some output 0-100 with 50 being neutral, perhaps anything over 80 or below 20 is interpreted by the software to be “full power”.

3

No actual answer to your question, I’m afraid, but I just wanted to pop in and say that one of my friends who is a graduate student in robotics actually is making use of the wiimote in her research, although in her case the robot is for soccer rather than bowling. I have no idea what role the wiimote plays.

4

If it’s anything like a mouse or the knobs on your car stereo, the Wiimote will sample the accelerometer X times per second. My guess would be at some point the acceleration will quit registering.

5

I used some software to read the accelerometer info on my Mac, and I’m pretty sure that the accelerometer isn’t actually that sensitive. That is, just by playing with the thing in my hand, I could max out one or two of the accelerometers pretty easily. No need for a superhuman robot.

This leads me to believe that most of the things you’re controlling with the wiimote aren’t measuring magnitude as much as they are timing. This is reinforced by the fact that people can pretty easily play most games by making small movements. I can bowl as fast a ball with a flick of the wrist as I can by doing a full windup.