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AI robot outplays humans in table tennis milestone
- aanet 6mo agoSony AI's "Ace" robot outperforms humans in table-tennis (ping-pong) Archive: https://archive.is/20260422165419/https://www.ft.com/content/9860f042-3332-4534-9b1a-fa9f57b8347e#selection-1599.0-1599.50 https://archive.is/20260422165419/https://www.ft.com/content... Paper at Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10338-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10338-5
- aanet 6mo agoUtterly fascinating to see how the Ace robot from Sony AI was built to play with and beat elite level ping-pong players. Video here: https://youtu.be/EH8kZDc7OLk?si=YAnQi-lWE28QIkVA https://youtu.be/EH8kZDc7OLk?si=YAnQi-lWE28QIkVA A few things caught my eye: - Perception system tracks ball's spin at over 150 revolutions/second - Top speed of the ball can exceed 20-25 meters/second; (the table is only 2.7m long) - Reaction time of the robot can be as short as 20 milliseconds, roughly 10x faster than elite athletes - Event cameras used to detect the spin of the ball; regular cameras at 200Hz to detect the ball's trajectory in realtime (!) - Robot trained in simulation-only first using RL techniques, then transfers learning to real world Fascinating research!