HomeTechnologyWatch Sony’s elite ping-pong robot beat top-ranked players

Watch Sony’s elite ping-pong robot beat top-ranked players

TechnologyApril 22, 2026
1 min read
Watch Sony’s elite ping-pong robot beat top-ranked players
Humans have been building ping-pong playing robots for decades, such as Omron's FORPHEUS that challenged amateur competitors at CES 2017. What sets Ace apart from the rest is that the robot, which was
A human table tennis player out of focus in the foreground competing against a Sony’s Ace robot holding a red paddle. Ace is the first robot that can beat the best human players while following the official rules of table tennis. | Image: Sony AI

Humans have been building ping-pong playing robots for decades, such as Omron's FORPHEUS that challenged amateur competitors at CES 2017. What sets Ace apart from the rest is that the robot, which was developed by Sony's AI division, is the first that can hold its own against top-ranked human players and occasionally even beat them in matches that follow the official rules of the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF).

AI is already capable of besting humans at games like Chess and Go, but physical games pose a much greater challenge as robots have to be engineered to match the speed and responsiveness of the human mind and body. To b …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Source: The Verge

Share this article

Related Articles

Here’s what Mira Murati’s AI company is up to
2026May 12

Here’s what Mira Murati’s AI company is up to

Thinking Machines, the AI company founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, announced Monday that it's working on something called "interaction models." The idea behind interaction models, according t

Article1 min read
Read More