Sony Robot is King Pong
An autonomous robot ping-pong player dubbed “Ace” has achieved a milestone for AI and robotics in Tokyo by competing against and sometimes defeating top-level human players at table tennis, a feat that could presage an array of other applications for similarly adept robots. Ace, created by the Japanese company Sony’s AI research division, is the first robot to attain expert-level performance in a competitive physical sport, one that requires rapid decisions and precision execution, the project’s leader said. Ace did so by employing high-speed perception, AI-based control and a state-of-the-art robotic system. Ace’s architecture integrates nine synchronized cameras and three vision systems to track a spinning ball with exceptional accuracy and speedy processing time. “This is fast enough to capture motion that would be a blur to the human eye.”
There have been various ping-pong-playing robots since 1983, but until now they were unable to rival highly skilled human competitors. Ace changed that with its performances against human elite-level and professional players in matches following the rules of the International Table Tennis Federation, the sport’s governing body, and officiated by licensed umpires. “Unlike computer games, where prior AI systems surpass human experts, physical and real-time sports such as table tennis remain a major open challenge due to their requirements for fast, precise and adversarial interactions near obstacles and at the edge of human reaction time,” said Peter Dürr, director of Sony. In matches detailed in the study, Ace in April 2025 won three out of five versus elite players and lost two matches against professional players, the top skill level in the sport. Sony AI said that since then Ace beat professional players in December 2025 and last month.
Companies worldwide are making advances with robots. On Sunday, for instance, robots outran human runners in a half-marathon race in Beijing. Mayuka Taira, a professional table tennis player who lost a match to Ace last December, said in comments provided by Sony AI that the robot’s strengths “are that it is very hard to predict, and it shows no emotion.” “Because you can’t read its reactions, it’s impossible to sense what kind of shots it dislikes or struggles with, and that makes it even more difficult to play against,” Taira said. At the same time, professional human athletes are very good at adapting to their opponent and finding weaknesses, which is an area that we are working on.
Robotic humor: you will laugh.
I just saw a robot charging itself.
It was re-volting!
Why are so many robots progressive?
Many of them have transistors.
What would they call Texas robot repairmen?
Tex Mechs.
Why was the robot cancelled?
Because it would not accept non-binary arguments.
May 11th Birthdays
1999 – Sabrina Carpenter, 1985 – Jadyn Wong, 1997 – Lana Condor, 2000 – Madison Lintz
1911 – Phil Silvers, 1990 – Cam Newton, 1918 – Richard Feynman, 1935 – Doug McClure