Robotic Basketball Hoop

Industrial Athleticism at its Finest


Robotic Basketball Hoop is a full regulation-sized backboard and hoop mounted to one of the world’s largest industrial robots. We manipulate its movements in real-time by using spatial tracking sensors, game controllers, or touchscreen devices to tell where and when to move. With the hoop's newfound agility and liveliness, why not make it a character on the court? A competitor capable of taunting and teasing just like any other player. Our goal was to create a basketball hoop with personality: where it could kneel down and allow a dunk if it was feeling friendly, or move suddenly at the last second if it wanted to be a jerk. What followed was a thrilling blend of athletic prowess and pure chaos.

Implementation Details

This industrial-grade basketball hoop is attached to an ABB IRB 8700 robot arm — an absolute beast of a machine weighing in at 4,575 kg (~10,000 lbs) and reaching 5.1 m (~17 ft) tall. We paired this robot with our custom real-time control software, which provides low-latency, collision-free, singularity-free intuitive interaction with industrial robot arms.

The software was developed in NVIDIA’s Omniverse Isaac Sim, and connects to many other software, sensor tracking, and control devices over UDP and OSC. In the video, we use the excellent TouchOSC to connect a 8BitDo Lite2 game controller for intuitive control:

  • Joysticks move the hoop fully three-dimensionally: forwards, backwards, left, right, up, down.

  • The ‘A’ button resets the hoop to regulation height.

  • The ‘X’ button slams the backboard towards you to bounce the ball back in yo’ face.

This 4575kg, 5m tall robot makes for an imposing opponent.

Our real-time control software makes it easy and intuitive to move the robot with sensors, game controllers, and many other 3rd party devices and apps.

Image Gallery

Project Credits

This project was developed as a part of a 1-week Artist Residency at Loupe HQ in Portland, Oregon in March 2023. It is a collaboration between ATONATON x Loupe.

Concept & Software Development: Madeline Gannon

Basketball Skillz: Team Loupe (Jesse Shankle, Karl Robrock, Jonathan Schell, Shane Reetz, Nathan Schenk, and more!)