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Ping-pong robot beats top-level human players
- dmurray 6mo agoA year ago this [0] table tennis robot backed by Google DeepMind was discussed on HN. It plays much worse and the HN discussion is anchored around whether it's OK to call it "human-level" or if the authors should have clarified that they meant a human who doesn't actually play table tennis. But it was accepted as being SOTA at that time. What happened since then? This looks like the kind of level of advance we see in, say, coding AIs, but I thought physical robotics was advancing much more slowly. A partial answer is that the new robot cheats in ways that DeepMind didn't seem to. It has high speed cameras all over the room and can detect spin by observing the logo on the ball. But I'm not sure this explains such a big advance. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43861207 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43861207
- hermitcrab 6mo agoAs a human player (of a not-high standard) I cannot see the spin of the ball directly. I can only infer it from the movement of my opponents bat. So I would wonder that a camera could pick it up in real time. Also IT'S TABLE TENNIS, NOT PING PONG!
- jamesjyu 6mo agoIt was actually called ping pong until it became a trademark dispute, and the sport had to call it table tennis!
- hermitcrab 6mo agoAccording to this video it can read the spin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EH8kZDc7OLk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EH8kZDc7OLk
- BrandoElFollito 6mo agoI had a look at Google trends for France. Table tennis is slightly more common than ping pong but the latter is much more stable. Table tennis has huge peaks, the biggest one being during the OG in Paris. These parks are not reflected in there ping pong trend Interestingly, for Youtube searches this is the other way, with a much bigger difference in favour to ping pong
- neosat 6mo agoAs a player myself, and having seen much higher level player than me, reading the spin from the ball rotation (and in fact trajectory) of the ball is a common (if advanced) skill. Sometimes the movement of the bat can be deceptive (since with the same movement, where it contact on the bat, the finger pressure can affect the spin). For example, backspin/underspin balls will move slower after the first bounce and feel 'damper' while topspin will jump. So it's def. possible (and in fact reliable) to read the spin from the spin and trajectory of the ball.
- QuantumGood 6mo agoVisually reading spin is unreliable at all levels; the ITTF passed the two-color rubber rule requiring one black and one red side to neutralize players taking advantage of their opponents being unable to read the spin from watching the ball rotation via twiddling rackets with the same color rubber on both sides, but different characteristics.
- stavros 6mo agoI can't parse that sentence, can you please clarify?
- thatguy0900 6mo agoPing pong paddles have two sides, with different characteristics for each side. Now the two sides have to have different colors so your opponent can see what you are hitting it with, where before you could use the same color on both sides and your opponent wouldn't be able to tell how the ball would react
- stavros 6mo agoThanks!
- QuantumGood 6mo agoApologies! I left a much clearer edit on screen, and when I noticed I had not commited it, the edit window had closed.
- davebren 6mo agoThe ball trajectory gives the spin
- dataflow 6mo ago> Also IT'S TABLE TENNIS, NOT PING PONG! Is it also MOVING STAIRCASE, NOT ESCALATOR?
- throwup238 6mo ago> Also IT'S TABLE TENNIS, NOT PING PONG! Alas HN has finally found its next religious war! I’ve been feeling a little bored after that whole tabs vs spaces one was settled.
- user3939382 6mo agoSettled how? Tabs win, right?
- scythe 6mo agogo fmt
- antonvs 6mo agoLuckily Go is only used by people looking for a typed version of Python.
- Filligree 6mo agoI refuse. My code will be formatted according to my own preferences.
- drfloyd51 6mo agoImagine a world where your editor shows you what you want to see… but saves in a standard format for sharing.
- inanutshellus 6mo agoSo long as my format is the standard one, that all newcomers an unopinionateds see by default and thus my opinions rule forever... yeah! great idea! otherwise... oh hayol no.
- david422 6mo agoThat's what tabs accomplish!
- bombcar 6mo agoIt’s miniature table pickleball.
- paolovictor 6mo agoTo be honest, if Chinese folks are fine with calling it "ping pong" (乒乓), I'm fine, too. (Also, you sorta can infer the spin from the ball arc or even if you catch a glimpse of the rotating label)
- mcmoor 6mo agoLmao the character used is so cute
- Foobar8568 6mo agoIn french, we call that ping pong too. So yeah for ping pong.
- pil0u 6mo agoThat is simply not true. We call it "tennis de table" when it comes to the sport, and we call it "ping pong" when you play at a camping in flip flops.
- hermitcrab 6mo ago>even if you catch a glimpse of the rotating label Some people say they can see the spin from the rotating logo. I can't.
- zelphirkalt 6mo agoMaybe if it is a slow exchange. But I suspect, that trying that when the exchange is fast, will make one react way too slow. The inference happens by looking of how the opponent moved their racket/paddle. That starts way earlier, than one could possibly see it looking at the ball and tracking the logo.
- zelphirkalt 6mo agoThen we should at least write it correctly: Pīngpāng [1]: https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?page=worddict&email=&wdrst=0&wdqb=%E4%B9%92%E4%B9%93 https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?page=worddict&email=...
- segmondy 6mo agoIt's ping pong.
- thenthenthen 6mo agoIt is ping pang if you use standard pinyin. Also, all these fancy cameras, I wonder if they considered using sound as well? I am a super noob fE player but sound hints are pretty telling of the speed and where and how the ball was hit
- james_marks 6mo agoPing Pong is what you play for fun in the basement. The competitive sport is Table Tennis.
- 4gotunameagain 6mo agoThis is like software developers who write javascript wanting to be called engineers, isn't it
- ReptileMan 6mo agoVibe code
- avadodin 6mo agoErm, excuse me? The professional engineering language is called TypeScript. JavaScript is what you use to add popups to your GeoCities WebSite.
- antonvs 6mo ago> professional engineering language > TypeScript rofl
- drfloyd51 6mo agolol all you want. I’ve got 5 people on my team buying food and housing for their families with typescript skills.
- pixel_popping 6mo agoIt's great that they start somewhere in computers, kuddos to them.
- antonvs 6mo agoIt's great that they're earning a living, but "engineering" is a very puffed-up title for that activity.
- zhouzhao 6mo agoIt's pīngpāng.
- redleader55 6mo ago乒乓. I don't know how it could be more clear that it's not "table tennis".
- Steve44 6mo ago> Also IT'S TABLE TENNIS, NOT PING PONG! We can also add Whiff Waff to the alternative names!
- redsocksfan45 6mo ago[dead]
- nateguchi 6mo agoIt's Wiff Waff actually [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uix9kXIMVRM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uix9kXIMVRM
- Vegenoid 6mo agoI do not understand why people who get serious about it want so badly for it to be called table tennis. Ping pong is a way more fun name, and table tennis just seems to make it out to be a smaller, inferior version of tennis.
- tshaddox 6mo agoIn the context of competitive events, it probably makes sense to use "table tennis," simply because there is one notable event that uses "ping pong" to refer specifically to different set of rules and equipment (the World Championship of Ping Pong).
- aaron695 6mo ago[dead]
- buttersicle 6mo ago[dead]
- amandle 6mo agoReminds me of the Mitch Hedberg joke: "The depressing thing about tennis is that no matter how good I get, I'll never be as good as a wall."
- _doctor_love 6mo agoI used to love Mitch Hedberg. I still do, but I used to, too.
- EGreg 6mo agoPeter Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born in Votkinsk, May 7 1840. When he was a little boy he never played out in the streets of Votkinsk like the other little children of Votkinsk, because when Tchaikovsky was one month old, his parents moved to St. Petersburg. — Victor Borge
- _doctor_love 6mo agoPut up in a place where it is easy to see the cryptic admonishment T.T.T ¨ When you feel how depressingly slowly you climb it's well to remember that Things Take Time -- Piet Hein
- mjcohen 6mo agoAs Victor said, his parents were very upset when they came home and found him in front of a roaring fire, because they did not have a fireplace.
- jimt1234 6mo agoIf you don't like a parade, run in the opposite direction to fast-forward it.
- halfnhalf 6mo agoDon't table tennis players learn to predict how the ball will act based on their opponents movements? Seems like if they aren't able to do that with a robot opponent (who doesn't look or behave like a human) then they wouldn't be able to play at their best.
- ACCount37 6mo agoI do expect this to have a "novelty edge" over human opponents - which can be closed with practice, on the human end. And, like many AIs, it can have "jagged capability" gaps, with inhuman failure modes living in them - which humans can learn to exploit, but the robot wouldn't adapt to their exploitation because it doesn't learn continuously. Happened with various types of ML AIs designed to fight humans.
- zingar 6mo agoChess players learned to exploit chess computers’ weaknesses in the beginning too, but they can’t any longer. This version of the robot might not learn continuously, but the next will be better.
- cool_dude85 6mo agoI believe there are still some echoes of the concept. Even top engines will play certain grandmaster draw lines unless told more or less explicitly not to. So if you were playing a match against Stockfish you'd want to play the Berlin draw as White every time, for example.
- NickC25 6mo agoBut chess is a turn-based game where there's no deception (in the sense that both players can see all legal moves for both themselves and their opposition at all times), whereas in table tennis, it's in real time, it's fast as hell, the table is small, and the ball can have 2 or 3 different spin types from the same arm/hand/wrist movement , and can land in a number of different spots.
- tartoran 6mo agoCool. Now let's see two robots play and if it's fun let it become it's own thing. Other than that, this could be used for training actual players.
- jareklupinski 6mo agorobot ping pong league
- davebren 6mo agoIt would be a good benchmark for humanoid robots
- jimt1234 6mo agoI've always wished for something similar: autonomous car racing. No human drivers. No remote controls. Just program the cars before the race, and let them go. Maybe even load the cars with mild explosives so they go BOOM when they crash.
- pinkmuffinere 6mo agoAbsolutely love this idea, it sounds very fun
- chucksmash 6mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge_(2005) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge_(2005) (Linking that one as it's the first in which any of the teams completed the entire course)
- te 6mo agoHere's an entrance to the rabbit hole: https://www.a1k0n.net/2021/01/22/indoor-localization.html https://www.a1k0n.net/2021/01/22/indoor-localization.html
- finger 6mo agoI wonder if a top player with access to a robot like this can get an extra edge in training?
- hermitcrab 6mo agoEven club level players have access to tennis table 'robots'. They fire the ball at you and collect the return in a net. You can set the speed, position and spin. They are very basic compared to this robot, but useful for training.
- tantalor 6mo ago> Now, Wireless Joe Jackson! There was a blern hitting machine. > Exactly! He was a machine designed to hit blerns. I mean come on, Wireless Joe was nothing but programmable bat on wheels. > Oh? And I suppose Pitch-o-mat 5000 was just a modifier howitzer? > Yep!
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- janalsncm 6mo agoHere is the paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10338-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10338-5 I would love to see a video of this thing that shows the whole table. From the paper I guess they have to light the area very brightly. But it seems like a pretty serious set up.
- lucidrains 6mo agoquite surprised to see SAC, considering the deepmind ping pong paper resorted to evolutionary strategies, iirc
- metadat 6mo agoIs there a video of this in action? Pictures are not satisfying at all!
- ddarolfi 6mo agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EH8kZDc7OLk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EH8kZDc7OLk https://sonyresearch.github.io/ace_public/ https://sonyresearch.github.io/ace_public/
- bubblegumcrisis 6mo agoAm I correct in my understanding that- they had specialized software that not only tracked the ball, calculated spins using the logo, and fed calculated trajectories?
- fourthark 6mo agoYes, using nine specialized cameras. Still very impressive but the human is overmatched on equipment alone.
- phtrivier 6mo agoMy biggest fear at the moment is robot armies and police forces. Case in point : we're all expecting China needs to invade Taiwan soon, or they will run out of soldiers because of the one child policies of the 70s/80s. Meanwhile, Ukraine is holding up against a "modern" army with quickly assembled drones. So it all seems a bit like "they'll never put tanks through the Ardennes", sort of ? Where and when will the first invasion of a country by a purely remote controlled, AI assisted army take place ? Will robot battalions embed civilians to act as human shields ? Will the AI learn to mistreat the locals to maintain fear, or will they see it as a needless distraction and rush to the center of powers ? If war is mostly played out from a disrance, will years of playing RTS give South Korea an edge ?
- markus_zhang 6mo agoI don't think Russian army is very modern -- but maybe that's the reason of your quotation marks. I kinda think that the competitions among the big dogs (US/Russia/China/etc.) would eventually green light ANY AI/Robots projects if they can justify tipping the scale somehow, and in the process completely destroys the last element of any political counter-weight. Because "fear gives men wings". I would really hate to live in a dystopian world worse than what is described in the books/movies.
- kibwen 6mo agoMarching humanoid terminator robots will never be as cheap as a drone. Autonomous suicide drone swarms are what should terrify you.
- trhway 6mo agoAutonomous suicide drone swarms are easily countered by autonomous interceptor swarms. >Marching humanoid terminator robots ground bots, not necessarily marching, do have their value. They can have bulletproof armor, while still be relatively lightweight and small and fast. They can easily carry even 20-25mm autocannon - very destructive weapon, sometimes can even succeed against a real tank. And imagine when a swarm of drones lifts a ground bot, brings and drops it right into the needed point and protects it from the enemy drones while the ground bot just destructs the things around. Synergy between different weapons system has always been the super-weapon.
- retrochameleon 6mo agoI'll be impressed when it's a humanoid robot that has to contend with similar kinematic limitations as a human player.
- alexose 6mo agoYeah, the dang thing can reach all the way to the net while standing three feet behind the table
- Jailbird 6mo agoThat was my thought when watching the video. The robot is the size of a room if you count all the cameras. It's like the pitch-o-matic 5000 from Futurama.
- perlgeek 6mo agoI'm already impressed by their progress, but I wouldn't say it puts robots on par with humans when it comes to table tennis. Another limitation is that most humans[0] cannot actually see the spin that's on a ball, but need to predict it based on relative racquet movement to the ball. In the video, they say that their system measures spin. [0]: Table tennis legend Timo Boll has stated that he has excellent eyesight, and can actually see the rotation of the ball, which helped him during service receive.
- amelius 6mo agoAI gets all the fun jobs. Yet again. Now build a robot that can catch a bullet.
- RijilV 6mo agocareful what you wish for.
- __patchbit__ 6mo agoSpaceX Mechzilla chopstick catch of Starship booster is up there for difficulty.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- allthetime 6mo agoMuch like the robots beating half marathon records in China recently… who cares? Cake making robots can make cakes way faster than human bakers. Cars and motorcycles go faster than bicyclists. It is a boring given that purpose made machines perform the tasks they are built to perform better than humans.
- jedberg 6mo agoIt's an amazing feat of engineering because it requires constant micro-adjustments, something that robots couldn't do a few years ago.
- allthetime 6mo agoYeah, thinking through it a bit further, the real story here, aside from the mechanical engineering, is the application of AI/machine learning/computer vision processing. The advancements that have made it possible to reason about, simulate, and react to the complexities of a spinning ball in a fraction of a second are pretty cool. My gripe is mostly that this article isn't focusing on and detailing this.
- throwatdem12311 6mo agoComing soon to an ICE Goon Squad near you!
- hydrolox 6mo agoisn't this a technology forum?
- allthetime 6mo agoThe article's main focus is on the "vs. human" aspect and is light on technical details. I would love to hear specifics from the engineers behind this.
- slowhadoken 6mo agoThe greatest blernsball player was a machine for playing blernsball.
- mgh2 6mo agoNature video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EH8kZDc7OLk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EH8kZDc7OLk
- ChrisMarshallNY 6mo agoMakes sense that it would. Reminds me of this old The Onion story: https://theonion.com/ping-pong-somehow-elicits-macho-posturing-1819565861/ https://theonion.com/ping-pong-somehow-elicits-macho-posturi...
- jcims 6mo agoThe motion system constrains the problem quite a bit. This video of high speed vision/actuators is 16 years old - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfdHY26E2jc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfdHY26E2jc I was expecting/hoping for a humanoid robot.
- chasil 6mo agoWhat happens when two of them play each other? How easy is it to introduce artifacts that reduce accuracy and performance?
- perlgeek 6mo agoDo you think they ever built two of them? :-) > How easy is it to introduce artifacts that reduce accuracy and performance? Probably pretty easy. Have less-than-perfect lighting or introduce some wind, and the AI has to do a huge amount of relearning.
- sd9 6mo agoThe official Sony AI video, which is really interesting and has some glorious footage: https://youtu.be/FrGq8ltb-_E?si=PWm1Dv0T9UHUFw0t https://youtu.be/FrGq8ltb-_E?si=PWm1Dv0T9UHUFw0t
- emmelaich 6mo agoMore details and videos at https://ace.ai.sony/ https://ace.ai.sony/
- nemo44x 6mo agoWell, I guess we’re going to fire all the Ping-pong players at the office and replace them with these robots.
- jmward01 6mo agoI'm not that excited about 'x beats human at y' anymore. I am more interested in 'x beats human at made up on the spot tasks p d and q'. That is starting to happen more generically and is a bigger sign of emerging capability. We can always create something confined that will beat humans, it isn't until recently that we are starting to be able to generally beat humans at tasks.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- runicelf 6mo agoNow we need to find out if the robot can win against the wall
- OisinMoran 6mo agoThis is great, I remember being sorely disappointed by the hyped up Timo Boll vs Kuka robot 12 years ago. I thought it was going to be a real match and seemed like the robot would destroy him, but ended up just being a marketing stunt and felt like a fixed fight, with no real digging into the tech or why the robot "lost". Still some cool footage: https://youtu.be/tIIJME8-au8 https://youtu.be/tIIJME8-au8
- vova_hn2 6mo agoWhile the engineering behind this achievement is really impressive, it doesn't feel that important in the grand scheme of things. We had machines "beating" humans in physical tasks for a very long time. No one would be impressed by a car winning a running competition or a construction crane lifting more weight than an Olympic weightlifting champion.
- jillesvangurp 6mo agoThe significance of ping pong is not beating humans but that it is a sport that depends on high precision, fast movement, and rapid responses. The aim of the game is to out maneuver the opponent and corner them such that they can't respond and adapt quickly enough. A robot beating a human means that it does this better, faster, and more precise. A few days ago, a bi pedal robot ran a a half marathon about eight or nine minutes faster than the fastest human can. These are not the clumsy robots of a few years ago that could only do simple, pre-programmed tasks and had to work in fenced off areas because they had no awareness of anything around them (including fragile people) but self stabilizing, inhumanly fast running robots that can operate in any kind of environment and adapt to a wide variety of tasks. And then complete those tasks at very high precision and speed.
- vultour 6mo agoI'm sorry but none of this sounds in any way exciting or like a breakthrough. There are ASML machines that hit microscopic tin particles with a laser 50,000 times per second, but it's somehow an achievement we've managed to create a ping pong paddle that's fast enough to hit a ball? Precision robotics have been used in manufacturing for decades.
- throwatdem12311 6mo agoWe’ve had chess computers better than humans for a long time now but nobody cares about that because it’s not about winning it’s about the humanity.
- _carbyau_ 6mo agoAnd humans have mastered radio waves for communication, washing machines for washing clothes, dishwashers for dishes etc etc. However, the point here is not that it makes a sport redundant, but that a type of observation, calculation, and movement has been achieved. I for one hope to see this tech in action from the customer side of a teppanyaki restaurant. It won't replace the humour of a good human teppanyaki chef but maybe I'll be able to afford it....
- throwatdem12311 6mo agoI don’t care about robots being better than humans at human achievement. Would anyone ever watch Clankers play hockey against eachother at a Clanker Olympics? The idea is absurd, I want to see humans competing because they are humans not just because they are good.
- mgfist 6mo ago> Clankers play hockey against eachother at a Clanker Olympics Well actually hockey in particular could be entertaining, depending on how they play.
- throwatdem12311 6mo agoRobocops vs Terminators maybe
- efskap 6mo agoFurthermore, I think we care most about the context surrounding the humans. If a txt2vid model could generate a 100% perfect video of a soccer match, perfectly rendering each blade of grass, would anyone watch it? No, because we care about the team and the stories of the players. Not just the spectacle being shown.
- eunos 6mo ago> If a txt2vid model could generate a 100% perfect video of a soccer match, perfectly rendering each blade of grass, would anyone watch it? No, because we care about the team and the stories of the players. Not just the spectacle being shown. But AI would produce hilarious and memeable soccer matches. Those are enough to reserve your attention and waste your time.
- NitpickLawyer 6mo agoPlenty of people watch TCEC (Top Chess Engine Championship) livestreams. Even more watch a selection of games curated by professional analysts. Some of the games are really interesting and surface novel stuff.
- aldielshala 6mo agoFinally an AI that takes someone's job and nobody's upset about it.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- downboots 6mo agoRobo-augmented padel, the future
- thenthenthen 6mo agoObligatory Stuff Made Here robot putter: https://youtu.be/2OfjZ3ORJfc?si=IHdZaLJE2TBg45HF https://youtu.be/2OfjZ3ORJfc?si=IHdZaLJE2TBg45HF
- laxpri 6mo agoI watched this video two times(I love it) . the thing is , he is using to solve is hybrid approach , not fully neural based (which make sense, for the compute limitation , and obviously it is still amazing ) . but there could be many approaches for this , like fully neural based or work with less hardware..etc ..etc ( there is many I just cant recall it right now) . I am waiting for someone making that version of this
- perlgeek 6mo ago> In matches detailed in the study, Ace in April 2025 won three out of five versus elite players and lost two matches against professional players, the top skill level in the sport. Sony AI said that since then Ace beat professional players in December 2025 and last month. What exactly is an "elite" player, if it's not a professional?
- Jtarii 6mo agoWould assume the top amateur players that don't play professionally.
- __patchbit__ 6mo agoProfessionals play for money. Elites just do it.
- XCSme 6mo agoSo, an amateur player
- arjunthazhath 6mo agoGlad to see new kind of robots other than those cliche dog like ones....that does nothing but walk. In india its pretty much seen in every public event as a marketing gimmick.
- Ylpertnodi 6mo ago> robots other than those cliche dog like ones....that does nothing but walk. They may be testing camera's and microphones.
- thenthenthen 6mo agoIs that a legal serve?
- perlgeek 6mo agoTechnically not, because you're required to toss the ball with your free hand. However, exceptions are made, for example I once played against a one-handed player, he simply tossed it with his playing hand, it was fine. It's a bit hard to tell if the toss was high enough, it's supposed to be 15cm (about the height of the net), and this seems to be close to the limit.
- nilslindemann 6mo agoI find Sony's work valuable. In my opinion, the primary purpose of AI is still, first and foremost, to relieve us of the physical labor we don't want to do. The next step to be taken is to create a universal basic income. Evolution will then unfold, as creative people will be able to dedicate their whole life undisturbed to the problems they deem important. Here a video where one can actually see the robot in action: https://youtu.be/lWp6XNHaWRk https://youtu.be/lWp6XNHaWRk
- tgv 6mo agoUBI is a phantom. If (when?) AI takes over and everyone is put on UBI, the problems we'll deem important will be finding enough food to survive.
- nilslindemann 6mo agoDoes UBI not mean that one does _not_ have to worry about finding enough food to survive?
- tgv 6mo agoIf you follow that definition, it can (and will) stop existing. Don't count on Sam Altman to keep your groceries affordable.
- nilslindemann 6mo agoWhen I talk about Universal basic income, I mean that steps are taken that it exists. Otherwise, it is something else with another name.
- munksbeer 6mo ago> In my opinion, the primary purpose of AI is still, first and foremost, to relieve us of the physical labor we don't want to do. Why only physical labour? There might be a lot of admin or thought labour (non physical) that we don't want to do either.
- aslushnikov 6mo agoI'm very surprised to see the rapid advancement in robotics these days. After all the fancy demos of Boston Dynamics and others from 10 years ago, and no real advancement beyond them, we kinda learned to treat robotics as "fancy toys". Now, this feels to me very much like a Deep Blue moment in chess, when to everyone's surprise it won over Garry Kasparov 3.5 to 2.5. 20 years in, and no one even considers competing with chess engines. This Ace robot won over table tennis professionals in 3 matches and lost in 2. Even the score is similar. I wonder what it'll all look like in 20 years from now.
- CarbonCycles 6mo agoIn case anyone is interested, here is a paper on how they implement this. https://arxiv.org/html/2504.10035v2 https://arxiv.org/html/2504.10035v2
- tgv 6mo agoSure? The website points to an article in Nature with different authors. They seem to refer to the people from Tübingen, though.
- Der_Einzige 6mo agoI suppose this recent love-letter video to a random table top game from Rockstar games from NakeyJakey is now relevent to this thread... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cMc4M5QJvM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cMc4M5QJvM
- XCSme 6mo agoNot to take anything away from the robot, but I would have liked to see the match be against a male player, as they can impart higher speed an spin on the ball, which would give the robot less reaction time.
- yttrium 6mo agoIt did play against a male player, as outlined in the article: > Sony AI autonomous robot Ace returns a shot back against its human opponent, table tennis player Yamato Kawamata, during a match in December 2025, as seen in this photograph released on April 22, 2026.
- dyauspitr 6mo agoIt did but didn’t win against not win against the male. It’s in the video from Sony AI.
- yttrium 6mo agoIt did also win against two male players - you can see some of the replays and the scores in the actual sony publicity video here: https://ace.ai.sony/ https://ace.ai.sony/. Most notably the best player it played (#64 last year) it lost against quite handily, 11-2, 11-6.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 6mo agoI wonder if human TT players can learn to use multiple cameras or points of view.
- shmoil 6mo agoAny links to actual full matches played? I only see a point here, a point there, no full matches.
- jrm4 6mo agoAnyone else entirely unimpressed? I'm just thinking about all the sensor and responsive things that must exist for cars, planes, manufacturing etc, and this just seems like an inevitable trick that someone could do? Like, my kid watches the Mark Rober videos and this is just that?