A Blind Guy Could Hit a Bullseye on This Magical Dartboard

So a former NASA engineer has too much time on his hands ...

March 23, 2017 9:00 am
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Richard Garriott de Cayeux speaks onstage at The New Golden Age Of Human Spaceflight during the 2013 SXSW Music, Film + Interactive Festival at Austin Convention Center on March 11, 2013 in Austin, Texas. (Sean Mathis/Getty Images for SXSW)

Unless your name is Mark Dudbridge, your odds of hitting a bullseye in darts are about as good as the odds that your name is actually Mark Dudbridge .

At least that used to be the case.

Enter former NASA engineer Mark Rober, who just spent three years perfecting a home-made dartboard that guarantees a bullseye on nearly every throw. To pull off the engineering feat, Rober attached infrared reflectors to some darts and outfitted his board with six motion-tracking cameras and motors. Then he wired the whole thing up to a computer that tracks a dart’s flight path in order to quickly reposition the board to ensure a bullseye. According to Rober, in the half-second that a dart is airborne, the board moves up to 100 times. The target can also be set to guarantee misses.

But if you’d rather attempt to do things the old-fashioned way (pedestrian!), here’s what Dudbridge recommends.

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