THE END IS NIGH. The robots have finally learned how to beat us in our most sacred sport: rock, paper, scissors.

Scientists at the University of Tokyo, Japan have designed a robotic hand that will win at the game every single time.

Rather than any mathematical formula, the robot hand simply cheats by ‘seeing’ which of the three shapes the human hand makes, The Daily Telegraph reports.

High speed vision enables the cheating robot to see your rock, paper or scissors and make its decision at the last minute, seemingly throwing simultaneously.

To the human eye, the cheating can not be spotted but in a video demonstrating the robot’s skill, slow motion footage shows it making its decisions a fraction of a second after its human rival.

According to the Ishikawa Oku Lab, who claim to have designed the dishonest robot, this technology can be applied in the future to “motion support of human beings and cooperation work between human beings and robots without time delay”.

(Video uploaded by IshikawaLab)