Mar 01, 2019 11:07:00

A robot that identifies 'Magic: The Gathering' cards in order of price and automatically arranges them

The world's first trading card game (TCG), '

Magic: The Gathering, ' has players all over the world and is recognized by the Guinness World Records as the most played TCG in the world. It's not uncommon for a player to have more than 1000 cards, so managing the cards is very difficult. Such Magic: It was announced that a robot that automatically sorts the cards of The Gathering and creates a spreadsheet etc. that summarizes in order of price traded in the online shop has appeared.

Robotic Sorting Solutions
https://roboticsortingsolutions.com/

The machine currently only sorts Magic cards, though the founders tell me support for Yu-Gi-Oh! And Pokémon cards is coming shortly.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/28/this-robot-automatically-sorts-and-prices-cards-from-magic-the-gathering/

Magic: The Gathering is also actively trading cards, and Magic: The Gathering's highest-priced card, ' Black Lotus ,' was put up on eBay for $ 166,000 . ) The price is so high that it is sold. Players build decks to play against each other, and at the same time, sell their cards to shops and auctions and buy the cards they want.

On the other hand, if you have too many cards, you will have a hard time just managing your own cards. If you try to select and sell cards that are traded at a high price, or arrange cards according to various conditions to build a deck, it will take a huge amount of time.

Such Magic: The robot developed for The Gathering Player is ' Roca Sorter '. You can see what kind of card sorting robot Roca Sorter is by watching the following movie.

Roca Sorter Demo Video


The Roca Sorter has a large black box shape.

Simply place the cards you have in the tray and they will sort the cards according to a customizable algorithm.

You don't have to worry about the presence or absence of rare cards, the top and bottom of the card, different versions of the same card, the number of tokens, the language, etc. when identifying the card.

When you set the tray with the card on it ...

Various sort conditions such as 'Price order', 'Name alphabetical order', and 'Card set order' are displayed on the display. If you tap the condition you like, Roca Sorter will automatically sort the cards.

When the Roca Sorter starts moving, the read cards will be displayed one after another on the display.

Inside, the robot arm held the cards and sorted them by type of card. Magic: The Gathering cards are often very expensive, so the development team will develop a system that uses airflow to lift the card, minimizing the robotic arm and the card's tread so as not to damage the card. It is said that it took a lot of effort to do this. In the unlikely event that the card is damaged, the development team will compensate, but since the camera is installed inside the Roca Sorter, it seems that even if the user complains of a lie and requests compensation, it will be immediately known.

Sorting is completed in about 2 hours, and the sorting accuracy is 99% or more.

In addition, Roca Sorter will summarize the price information of the read card in a spreadsheet, synchronize the price list with Dropbox and Google Drive, and send it by e-mail. By using this price list, transactions in the online shop will be very smooth. By default, the card is identified based on the price setting of TCG's online shop '

TCGPlayer ', but it is also possible to input a unique price for each card shop that has Roca Sorter installed.

Roca Sorter is a robot for card shops, and at the time of writing the article, it is shipped only to stores in the United States. Currently, Roca Sorter only supports Magic: The Gathering, but the development team says that it plans to release a version compatible with Yu-Gi-Oh ! And Pokemon cards .