Is it possible to lose at Rochambeau, the millenia-old game of Rock, Paper, Sissors, every single time?

It shouldn't be but a new Janken robot (Janken is the Japanese name for Rock, Paper, Scissors - why is the West stuck with a French name for an ancient Egyptian game?  It's a mystery of linguistics) can win against humans without fail.  

Is it psychic?  Are humans that predictable?  No, it basically cheats - if by cheating I mean being much faster than I can ever be.

Humans tend to think about their opponent and anticipate what they will do, including what they think about what they think they will do; we basically falsify ourselves and then pick something random at the last moment.  The Janken robot instead uses super-fast vision, according to its creators in the Ishikawa-Oku Laboratory at the University of Tokyo.

Credit: Ishikawa-Oku Laboratory 

The Janken robot's high-speed vision system analyzes the position and the shape of the human hand and, because it can act in 1 millisecond, it recognizes whether rock, paper or scissors is being played and successfully counters it. It can't lose. Think you will just change your mind?  What about 1 millisecond do you not understand?

See it in action and be very afraid: