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by thret 4081 days ago
It's already biased towards the face that is facing up to start. With practice or by accident, you can toss it so that it wobbles but doesn't actually flip over. A casual observer cannot tell the difference.

Explained in http://www.amazon.com/Heads-Or-Tails-Gary-Kosnitzky/dp/B00FM...

1 comments

TODO: Build a robot with precise enough control that it can flip a coin (properly flipping, not just wobbling) and then catch it in a desired state (either heads or tails) with substantial accuracy.
That reminds me of the rock-paper-scissors robot from a while ago that always "wins" by watching the human hand to see what sign they are throwing, then throwing the countersign faster. It is so fast that unless you are watching it on high-speed film, you can't tell that it is cheating.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nxjjztQKtY

Not a robot, but Persi Diaconis (mathematician and magician) built a coin-flipping machine.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1697475

That's a pretty cool idea! Let me know how it goes :) I think it's totally possible.

For your viewing pleasure:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIIJME8-au8

Cheers.