Why did they build the entire pinball machine themselves? The portion that "plays itself" is a camera attached to some very basic computer vision techniques that boil down to:
When ball detected in flipper area, flip.
You could attach this to any commercial machine by connecting a relay where the flipper buttons would be.
When ball detected in flipper area, flip.
You could attach this to any commercial machine by connecting a relay where the flipper buttons would be.