Ping Pong Robot Uses Agentic AI to Beat Expert Human Players

Scientists at Sony AI have developed a table tennis robot with enough speed and precision to beat even some expert ping pong players in the latest matchup between biological and artificial intelligence.

The robot, dubbed “Ace,” combines vision sensors, model-free reinforcement learning and high-speed robotic hardware in a crane-like lever with a ping pong bat attached. The resulting system can autonomously locate a ping pong ball in space, determine the correct technique needed to return it to an opponent’s side and repeat the process until a play is over.

Robots like Ace are known as AI agents, systems that can ...