This Robot Is Better at iPhone Games Than You Are

YouTube user and programmer Junya Sakamoto has created a robot that will play his iPhone games for him—and it's such a whiz, he wants to enter it into a competition.

Puzzles and Dragons is an iOS game that involves matching up colored spheres (Engadget compared it to Pokemon Shuffle). It's incredibly popular in Japan, so much so that there are annual Puzzles and Dragons tournaments held there.

Sakamoto built the bot using a Raspberry Pi and two-part mechanical housing that moves both the phone and the robot's "finger" via motors. Before teaching the robot to master Puzzles and Dragons (known as Pazudora in Japanese), he also taught it voice recognition so it could perform tasks for him, like a robot Siri. This video shows the robot texting, adding events to Sakamoto's calendar, and even starting a timer so Sakamoto knows when his cup ramen is ready.

In the video's description, Sakamoto says he plans to participate in Japan's 3rd Puzzles and Dragons cup, but it's unclear if the robot will be allowed entry. Somehow I doubt it, but I can't say I wouldn't appreciate its help with the more difficult levels of Candy Crush.