Project Ace: Table Tennis Robots Can Now Beat Humans

Robots are getting pretty good at table tennis. We have already covered a couple of them that can hold rallies. Project Ace aims to use AI to beat elite human players. This Sony AI project uses a perception system to measure ball spin in real-time. It uses a custom built high speed robotic arm with reinforcement learning to handle high-speed, high spin balls

This AI driven robotic ping pong player was tested against 5 elite players and managed to win 3 matches. It uses 12 high speed sensors for ball tracking. Ace can track ball spins over 9000 revolutions per minute. It can return balls at speeds up to 19.6m/s.

[HT]