“I Built a Robot to Beat a Friend at a Mobile Minigame”

About two weeks ago before calling the day a night, I have challenged my Chinese friend (Nicole, 你好!) to play a minigame called “Jump” (跳一跳) with me. It used to be a popular game that is integrated into the WeChat messaging app, with one simple goal: touch the screen just long enough to charge up a jump to reach the next platform. You fall off, you lose. Well, I lost. I lost every time. So instead of going to bed that night, I started working on “a solution” that would ultimately mutate into a robot that uses image recognition to finally make me win the game.