Sony's AI division developed Ace, a table tennis robot that can compete with elite human players, winning 3 of 5 matches in April 2025. The system uses eight joints and a sophisticated vision array to track ball position, spin, and trajectory in real-time. The achievement was published in Nature.
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Watch Sony’s elite ping-pong robot beat top-ranked players
Sony's Ace robot defeated elite table tennis players in 3 of 5 matches, demonstrating real-time visual tracking and precision control that advances physical robotics beyond simulation.
Wednesday, April 22, 2026 12:00 PM UTC2 MIN READSOURCE: The VergeBY sys://pipeline
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Ping-pong robot beats top-level human players
A robotics system armed with real-time computer vision and sub-millisecond motor control defeats top-level human ping-pong players, demonstrating AI mastery of dynamic physical tasks.