AI technology reached a new milestone with Sony AI’s Ace, a robot capable of defeating professional players at table tennis.
Footage released by Sony AI and captured in April 2025 at the Sony AI Research Lab Tokyo, Japan, shows Ace beating his opponents in several games of table tennis.
Comparing maximum ball velocities, researchers found that “human players’ ‘Won’ shots exhibits higher linear and angular velocity than that of ‘Returned’ shots, indicating that human players rely on stronger-than-average shots to win the point. By contrast, the distributions of ‘Returned’ and ‘Won’ shots produced by Ace are similar, suggesting that Ace won points through consistent returns rather than faster shots.”
“Ace achieved three victories in five matches against elite players, along with competitive performances in the remaining matches,” researchers said. “These results demonstrate the potential of physical AI agents to outperform human experts in interactive, real-time tasks.”
📸 Sony AI via Storyful
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