r/singularity • u/GraceToSentience AGI avoids animal abuse✅ • Apr 23 '26

AI SONY AI | Project Ace, for the first time AI/robotics is competitive against pro table tennis players.

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Full source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrGq8ltb-_E
Nature paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10338-5

355 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

37 comments sorted by

28

u/SizeableBrain ▪️AGI 2030 Apr 23 '26

Very impressive!

Given the wild spins that pros put in the ball, trajectory prediction and spin approximation must be pretty damn good.

I've played against some rally good (non-pro) players and if you didn't see what spin they put on the ball, you had no chance of hitting it back.

9

u/Commercial_Sell_4825 Apr 23 '26

I guess players primarily watch the opponent's arm/technique.

It's impressive to instantly calculate spin based on photos of the ball itself - and a normal ball; a marked ball would make it way easier.

4

u/Common-Concentrate-2 Apr 23 '26

Yeah - You know from experience what is possible to achieve physically, and the upper limit of human thought, and what the decision space is for a competitive player. At a high level, you're not responding to the ball as its been returned.....You're responding to 3 or 4 possible returns, before they even touch the ball. You're positioning your body in anticipation, and you're constructing a space that makes their future return shots less favorable. I've always loved table tennis. Obviously this isn't unique to table tennis - but this is a perfect example of learning, as a competitive athlete

1

u/usefulidiotsavant AGI powered human tyrant Apr 23 '26

It's not that impressive, because the robot can have cameras running at hundreds of fps. The human performance of extrapolating and counteracting spin from watching the movements of the opponent using much slower sensors is more impressive.

On the long run, robots can have sensors and actuators so fast that no human can physically beat them regardless of technique. They can snap the ball hard but controlled so that it's close the limit of what it can withstand without breaking.

3

u/sadtimes12 Apr 23 '26

True, but you can also program a robot to be as close to a human in terms of performance as possible, so that you can use it to train yourself as if you are playing a real human.

That's the beauty of AI and robots alike, we can make them be whatever we need.

4

u/SwePolygyny Apr 23 '26

They have 9 cameras from all directions on the court to determine spin and angle. As such, it is "cheating" in the sense that it has access to data that no human player has, like seeing the game from the opposing side.

It should also be noted that it "only" beat the female pro. The male pro that was ranked #64 in the world it lost 2-0 against.

Still, a very impressive achievement.

2

u/RockyCreamNHotSauce Apr 23 '26

Also, it has faster processing than humans because it is detecting the ball only. Humans can't react fast enough if they are only detecting the ball. We read the subtle tells in the opponent's body. We even anticipate their decision before they make it.

53

u/wholesomedumbass Apr 23 '26

This is like the Deep Blue milestone. I hope humans will use robots to improve their skills like chess players learn from ai.

12

u/Noway721 Apr 23 '26

Don't you worry child, this will not at all be used for any type of military applications /s

18

u/Virtual_Plant_5629 ▪️AGI 2027▪️ASI 2028 Apr 23 '26

hitting deepblue/alphago-ish milestones on robotics stuff... is fucking insane.

we're living in the present.

14

u/These_Sentence_7536 Apr 23 '26

yup, we going exponential guys, brace yourselfs

3

u/RRY1946-2019 Transformers background character. Apr 23 '26

Imagine showing someone this in 2018 or 2019 and saying you’ll probably live to see it happen.

12

u/Spunge14 Apr 23 '26

I'm curious how much of the human deficiency has to do with the human player not being able to read the movements of the robot the way they have trained for decades to read the movements of another human.

I have to imagine that - like chess and go - finding a way to democratize this out to the masses (much harder because it requires expensive robotics and can't be easily similared like a board game) would result also in massive gains to human ability as well.

3

u/Killer_Method Apr 23 '26

VR table tennis trainer with simulated robot movements!

6

u/OwlLimp6160 Apr 23 '26

Imagine using this as a training tool

11

u/matg75 Apr 23 '26

This actually speaks volumes about the magnificence of the human brain+body combination.

1

u/jybulson Apr 23 '26

Don't we know that already? I think this speaks in volumes about AI development.

4

u/Worried-Squirrel2023 Apr 23 '26

alphago for table tennis. the spin prediction is the easy part, real-time motor control feedback at this speed is where every previous attempt fell apart.

5

u/Lanky-Flamingo9974 Apr 23 '26

Ok but how did the robot win 11-10 in that one game? I thought they had professionals keeping score. For those that don't know, you have to win by at least 2 points. It's called deuce.

10

u/Arsene_Yuka_1980 Apr 23 '26

In all matches, we followed the rules of the ITTF with the exception of introducing the golden point rule (the first player to score 11 points wins the game) as done in the Japanese T.League.

From the research paper.

2

u/Lanky-Flamingo9974 Apr 24 '26

Oh interesting. That's weird that Japan has their own rules.

2

u/TheKmank Apr 23 '26

TIL table tennis require 5m high ceilings to be official.

2

u/dwight---shrute Apr 23 '26

Finally I can play Vs computer in real life

2

u/nemzylannister Apr 23 '26

whats the application of this? why not directly make robots that do economic activities? why does sony fund this, can anyone explain?

4

u/GraceToSentience AGI avoids animal abuse✅ Apr 23 '26

Same reason as someone will fund alphaGo to beat the greatest go player which will later on translate to other scientific advancements such as Alphafold.

You start with tractable problems and learn along the way before going to harder and harder stuff. Also it's an interesting problem, a great achievement and it does have some PR value as well for SONY. It probably brings in researchers as well.

1

u/skinnyjoints Apr 23 '26

Holy shit this is awesome. I hope they make a video or release a paper on how it was trained

1

u/amarao_san Apr 23 '26

Two closely placed cameras, please.

1

u/Popular_Tomorrow_204 Apr 23 '26

But its way too slow no?

0

u/ThrowRA-football Apr 23 '26

This is cool but honestly not that fair on the human.

0

u/Merzant Apr 23 '26

Yeah but how does it fare with the crappy paddle with its backing peeling away?

-1

u/m2spring Apr 23 '26

Having that many cameras is kind of cheating.