AI-powered robot can spot Waldo in 4.5 seconds

A rubber-handed robot has proven it’s more of a whiz at “Where’s Waldo” than most humans, and it’s been given the appropriate name “There’s Waldo.”

The robot has cut its hunting time down to a mere 4.5 seconds — “better than most 5-year-olds” says the video’s rather harsh description. Watch the little rapscallion smack the crap out of Waldo’s pudding-like face here:

Don’t watch the video if you don’t want to be spoiled. You know, if “Where’s Waldo” is your thing.

Created by the creative agency redpepper, the little arm is controlled via a Raspberry Pi. Matt Reed, Creative Technologist at Redpepper, trained Google’s AutoML Vision AI service to recognize Waldo using a series of images. The Raspberry Pi hovers over the image, snaps a photo, and the AI analyzes all the faces in the image. The robot than puts its finger on the face it’s more than 95 percent certain is Waldo.

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Taking away the image of Waldo, the robot is by itself a nifty visual of the power and speed of AI facial recognition software. If you want to see a good demonstration of how fast a well-trained AI can pick someone out of a crowd, here you go. Though it should be said most humans are more defined and — let’s face it — beautiful than the likes of Waldo.

Reed proposed an alternate use of the AI to The Verge: “Maybe a fun use would be seeing what cartoon character the AI thinks you look closest to? Maybe could detect comic book forgeries?” And sure, why not? Though I know I’m a dead ringer for Rogue from the X-Men and no one will convince me otherwise.

You could argue it rather defeats the purpose of “Where’s Waldo” to have a robot find that stripey idiot for you. Personally, I find Waldo’s fashion sense to be so galling I don’t care to find him, so more power to the robot. It might spoil the fun for a child, but show me a child capable of using an AI-powered Raspberry Pi rubber hand thingamajig, and I’ll show you a child that shouldn’t be insulted with the likes of Waldo in the first place.