Sony's AI Robot Ace Masters Table Tennis

0:00It's April 22nd. This is Canada News Today, powered by AI. I'm Cory with the story. Sony built a robot arm called ACE that's crushing it at table tennis, taking on pro players and even beating some elite ones. This machine uses artificial intelligence through reinforcement learning to pick up the game from trial and error. No hand-coding needed. With nine cameras tracking the ball spin by its logo, ACE moves its eight-jointed paddle with speed and precision on a full-size court. Researchers made sure ACE plays fair, matching human speeds and reach so it wins on smarts and tactics, not brute force. They set up an Olympic-level court in Tokyo for heads-of-head matches with top athletes who trained 20 hours a week. Sony caused this a breakthrough. The first robot hitting expert human level in a real-world competitive sport. Pro players were stunned by ACE's skills, with some saying it pulled off shots that thought impossible for any human. Big veteran Kingeru Nakamura watched one rally and admitted it opened his eyes to new possibilities

1:02in the game. Even critics note, the robot's vision gives it an edge, but the contest push both tech and human limits. Since the study dropped in nature, Sony kept tweaking ACE, ramping of shot speeds and aggressive play near the table edge. In December, matches against four high-skill opponents, it'd be three out of four. This ping-pong showdown shows AI robots getting agile and unpredictable spots, paving the way for factories, industries, and beyond where machines adapt on the fly.