A year ago this [0] table tennis robot backed by Google DeepMind was discussed on HN.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>[0] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43861207">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43861207</a>
My biggest fear at the moment is robot armies and police forces.<p>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.<p>Meanwhile, Ukraine is holding up against a "modern" army with quickly assembled drones.<p>So it all seems a bit like "they'll never put tanks through the Ardennes", sort of ?<p>Where and when will the first invasion of a country by a purely remote controlled, AI assisted army take place ?<p>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 ?<p>If war is mostly played out from a disrance, will years of playing RTS give South Korea an edge ?
I don't think Russian army is very modern -- but maybe that's the reason of your quotation marks.<p>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".<p>I would really hate to live in a dystopian world worse than what is described in the books/movies.
Much 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.
Reminds 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."
Here is the paper:<p><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10338-5" rel="nofollow">https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10338-5</a><p>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.
Don'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.
I do expect this to have a "novelty edge" over human opponents - which can be closed with practice, on the human end.<p>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.
You can predict the movement of the ball (speed, direction, spin) based on the movement of the bat relative to the ball. What the rest of the player's body is doing is irrelevant to predicting what the ball will do - but relevant to predicting where they will be when you make the return shot.
I'll be impressed when it's a humanoid robot that has to contend with similar kinematic limitations as a human player.
Is there a video of this in action? Pictures are not satisfying at all!
I wonder if a top player with access to a robot like this can get an extra edge in training?
Even 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.
Cool. 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.
AI gets all the fun jobs. Yet again.<p>Now build a robot that can catch a bullet.
> Now, Wireless Joe Jackson! There was a blern hitting machine.<p>> Exactly! He was a machine designed to hit blerns. I mean come on, Wireless Joe was nothing but programmable bat on wheels.<p>> Oh? And I suppose Pitch-o-mat 5000 was just a modifier howitzer?<p>> Yep!