Re-envisioning the Chess-bot

Robotic Chess Players are not new. But robots which play Chess via a touch-screen are. For this reason, the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology has just received a US patent for their ‘Board Game System Utilizing a Robot Arm’.
The emphasis on the ‘arm’ part is perhaps an understatement of their achievements, for the drawings show a semi-complete humanoid-bot playing chess. This is one of the very few inventions to implement a robot which operates a touch-screen (initially designed for humans) via the prodding of its robotic arm.
The University previously published details of the supporting research which led to the patentable invention in their paper ‘The Multifunctional Interactive Touch Panel System for Entertainment Robot’ (caution: 6MB .pdf)

Note: Because of the re-configurable touch-screen the bot can also play Checkers, Go, GoBang, and Machang.