Super agile humanoid robot seen playing tennis with humans in uncanny video

Can a robot keep up with Serena Williams?Researchers have taught a humanoid robot to play tennis with humans — and it can hold its own.Chinese AI robotic company Galbot designed software to teach a Unitree G1 humanoid robot to play tennis against a human engineer.The company posted a video to social media showing a white robot holding what appears to be an unmodified tennis racket and using it to return the ball as it shuffles across the court.“Your humanoid tennis player is here!” Galbot wrote on X.“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.”“This marks a leap from mechanical motion imitation to intelligent, decision-driven athletic interaction.”The software is dubbed LATENT (Learning Athletic Humanoid Tennis Skills from Imperfect Human Motion Data), and the company claims it’s the world’s first real-time whole-body planning and control algorithm for athletic humanoid tennis.According to a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper, the system had to rely on “imperfect human motion data” consisting only of “motion fragments that capture the primitive skills used when playing tennis” rather than clean motion capture from “real-world tennis matches.”The short fragments of human movement used were made up of things like forehand swings, backhand strokes and basic footwork.

These motion fragments become a library of movement building blocks which the robot stitches together and figures out how to combine them in real time.When it comes to wrist control, the robot’s high-level controller directly adjusts the wrist during play rather than using the “imperfect” data.The robot can sustain multi-shot tennis matches with humans, reacting to balls traveling over 15 meters per second, which is about 33.5 miles per hour, and manages to produce coordinated strokes and footwork.The movements produced look relatively natura...