Tennis is a demanding sport even for humans. It’s even more so for robots to master. LATENT is a system that enables humanoid robots to learn the game with imperfect data. It learned how to play tennis using only 5 hours of motion capture data. It can sustain multi-shot rallies, traveling balls at speeds over 15 m/s.
LATENT features reactive footwork. Its imperfect data “consists only of motion fragments that capture the primitive skills used when playing tennis rather than precise and complete human-tennis motion sequences from real-world tennis matches.”
[HT]