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The excitement surrounding recent strides in humanoid robotics is palpable. They’re being used to assemble electric cars, sort packages, and perform carefully choreographed martial arts on stage. Bipedal robots are even being sent to the frontlines of the Ukraine-Russia war and getting in trouble after startling old ladies on the street.
Sports are also no match for the agile automatons, from shooting hoops to live kickboxing matches in front of a crowd.
Now, Chinese AI robotics company Galbot has designed software that teaches a Unitree G1 humanoid robot how to perform a veritable feat: effectively playing tennis, allowing it to keep its own in a match-up against a human engineer.
A video the company posted to social media shows the white robot holding up what appears to be an unmodified tennis racket, which it uses to easily return the ball by shuffling across the court.
It’s yet another impressive demonstration of how far the tech has come — but whether the robot will be able to keep up with the likes of Novak Djokovic or Serena Williams any time soon remains to be seen, given the lighthanded volleys from the human engineers.
“For the first time, a humanoid robot can sustain high-dynamic, long-horizon tennis rallies with millisecond-level reactions, precise ball striking, and natural whole-body motion,” Galbot claimed in its post. “This marks a leap from mechanical motion imitation to intelligent, decision-driven athletic interaction.”
🎾Your humanoid tennis player is here!🤖
Introducing LATENT (Learning Athletic Humanoid Tennis Skills from Imperfect Human Motion Data) — the world’s first real-time whole-body planning and control algorithm for athletic humanoid tennis.
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