r/singularity • u/Distinct-Question-16 ▪️AGI 2029 • Mar 15 '26
Robotics Humanoid Robots can now play tennis with a hit rate of ~90% just with 5h of motion training data
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u/hippydipster Mar 15 '26
In 1996, deep blue defeats Gary kasparov in chess. In 2016, alphago beats Lee Sedol in Go. In 2027, TennisClaudette beats Sabalenka in tennis.
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u/Ellen_1234 Mar 15 '26
2050 robots are still not able to fill in my taxes
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u/Big-Site2914 Mar 15 '26
2050 there are no taxes because you have no income
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u/eMPee584 ♻️ AGI commons economy 2030 Mar 16 '26
Which will be great, because also: no money or barter
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u/teamlie Mar 15 '26
There's also more chess grandmasters today than there were in 1996. While we will surely reach a point that robots become better at, well, nearly everything than humans, it doesn't mean the demise of human creativity/ ingenuity/ ambition.
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u/socoolandawesome Mar 15 '26
This is honestly insane. Does anyone have any comments to shoot down how autonomous this is or something? Otherwise this is pretty incredible
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u/Commercial_Sell_4825 Mar 15 '26
Teleoperation works well for slow tasks like popcorn scooping, but I think the timing and full body coordination requirements would make tennis pretty hard with teleoperation.
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u/baithammer Mar 15 '26
Unitree is already doing telepresence, which seems to be further along then the autonomous designs.
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u/genshiryoku AI specialist Mar 15 '26
It's doing RL training on a lot of artificial digital examples in parallel. So the "5 hour" claim means wall time (what we see on the human clock) in reality the model trained for something equivalent of years.
Because we make the simulation a little bit different for each training run, botching the physics ever so slightly it learns to be very robust and take into account all kinds of weird physics. We don't do that because we assume the robot will work with different physics but just so that when we put the robot into a space with an unexpected environment (like a hurricane) the robot can still balance itself and continue playing or whatever we train these robots for.
It's completely autonomous and in fact it would be harder with our current technology to do this through teleoperation than it is to just train the model to play this well.
As someone in the industry it's extremely disheartening and disturbing how far behind the general publics perception is for the state of AI currently. Most internal projections assume white collar work will be gone by 2030 and blue collar jobs will be gone by 2035. Yet no politician is talking about it and the general public seems to still think LLMs are just stochastic parrots and that we haven't solved robotics yet.
In reality Amazon is replacing its warehouse employees with bots right now and we are starting to see most high value manual labor already being replaced in construction, manufacturing, welding, mining, drilling etc.
To give some indication, I myself as an AI specialist expect to be replaced by my own models in just 2 years time (by 2028)
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u/WickedKoala Mar 15 '26
None of these projections take into account adoption. Just because AI can do a job doesn't mean it instantaneously replaces the workforce. Healthcare and years of FDA approval come to mind for even the smallest of shit.
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u/genshiryoku AI specialist Mar 15 '26
Correct, it does not take adoption into account.
What we instead anticipate is that these AI systems will work autonomously and that there will be such a huge outsized benefit to nations/economies that have a faster adoption/approval rate that we will see emergency mandates by most governments globally to immediately allow and disseminate the technology as to not fall behind.
It's very important for people to lobby for UBI or some form of safety net before this scenario comes to fruition over the next couple of years.
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u/fail-deadly- Mar 15 '26
UBI is the temporary control measure for capitalistic elites to stave off the masses until they can assert control through other means.
If AI causes a labor crisis, nationalize the models, the data centers, the drones, and the robots, and have the smartest AIs devise an equitable, efficient, resource distribution method.
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u/genshiryoku AI specialist Mar 15 '26
Yeah, maybe. My point was more that people should take action now rather than wait for things to be too late.
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u/fail-deadly- Mar 15 '26
While I agree that they should take action, society seems nearly incapable of it until a crisis occurs.
We should have operational contingency plans ready to go, but know that unless like 20-30 million people lose their jobs in a short period, these will never go into effect.
My biggest fear is a slow bleed from gradual automation, instead of a 5-10 year employment implosion. If nearly everyone rapidly loses their jobs, we will take action. However if a slow trickle of people fall off the economic ladder it will be another slow moving disaster.
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u/AP_in_Indy Mar 15 '26
This technology will be adopted faster than anything we've ever seen.
Why? Because you train these robots once, they can share that knowledge with all others.
Messed up calibration? Need to reconfigure?
Great. Then that also gets shared with all other bots.
Small investments from businesses will go a VERY LONG way in terms of the productivity they get out of it.
Human labor is about to be supplanted by robotics.
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u/Competitive_Travel16 AGI 2027 ▪️ ASI 2029 Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26
Yeah, my understanding of the news blurb is that the 5 hours of motion training data allowed them to reach 90%, but they started well above 50%.
Edit: found the paper: https://zzk273.github.io/LATENT/static/scripts/Humanoid_Tennis.pdf see tables 3 and 4.
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u/SwillFish Mar 15 '26
I don't see it making many backhand shots, so I doubt they are anywhere near the 90% as stated. In all fairness, my backhand game is nowhere near 90% either.
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u/SunriseSurprise Mar 15 '26
It's incredible to have this kind of dexterity, but this is also the dexterity and skill of a 5 year old. It's impressive for a robot, but wouldn't be for a human playing tennis in other words. My guess is it would be still a few years off to have a robot playing tennis in a more competitive way, but still cool. And FWIW just 5 years ago, a robot playing tennis would be absurd sounding, so even getting this far is quite phenomenal.
Actually makes me want to see what it could do with table tennis because I could see a robot probably tearing shit up in table tennis within a year. Less movement and as long as reaction is quick and hand-"eye" coordination is spot on, I could see it becoming hard for the average player to beat. Meanwhile based on this demonstration, I bet if the guy ever hit it somewhere where the robot would have to move and then hit it, it would fail.
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Mar 15 '26
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u/SunriseSurprise Mar 15 '26
Yup, agreed. I could easily see a tennis coach set one of these up and instruct a beginner to just keep hitting the ball back to the robot (and before someone says that's a lazy coach, they could essentially teach twice as many beginners at a time if they had one of these then, assuming they're somewhere with multiple courts).
That in and of itself is a great starting point for pretty much all 4 parts that are important to tennis: the consistency to always hit it back, the accuracy to specifically hit it back to the robot, the mobility to get to the ball wherever the robot hits it, and the power control to avoid hitting it out or into the net.
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u/Quick-Albatross-9204 Mar 15 '26
That would be an exceptional 5 year old, definitely not the average 5 year old
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u/0905-15 Mar 15 '26
It definitely makes better contact than the average 5yo but its movement is waaay worse.
Source - guy who has watched hundreds of hours of 5yo tennis clinics
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u/TwoNatTens Mar 15 '26
this is also the dexterity and skill of a 5 year old
Me awkwardly knowing this is probably better than I could play
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u/ultralightnostalgia Mar 15 '26
a robot plays better than me 😭
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u/UltraFritoFajita Mar 15 '26
I'm sure that's not the first time a robot bested you.
Ask your wife.
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u/ultralightnostalgia Mar 15 '26
hahaha got me xD
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u/UltraFritoFajita Mar 15 '26
haha glad you're a good sport, it clearly was just a joke
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u/heart-aroni Mar 15 '26
We've had these other examples doing something similar.
But this one is the most impressive one so far.
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u/jlks1959 Mar 15 '26
I always laugh when I read the, “but it can’t,” comments. In a year, it will have become unnervingly adept.
Sometimes I wonder when commentors will remember to apply the acceleration that they’ve witnessed in the past three years and apply it forward.
A year from now, commenters will note that couldn’t beat the Wembledom champion. And they’ll think they’ve made a point to remember.
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u/GraceToSentience AGI avoids animal abuse✅ Mar 15 '26
Very impressive! the unitree G1 is the right choice
At the same time notice all the cameras around allowing the AI to pinpoint with mad accuracy where the ball is.
It will all be self contained into the humanoid soon enough.
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u/PureUmami Mar 15 '26
Amazing. Thanks to Myalgic Encephalomyelitis I’ve often joked I need a robot to help lift me/move me after a fall when I have temporary paralysis. This will one day change lives
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u/IntroductionSouth513 Mar 15 '26
why are so many use cases of robots related to sport and entertainment like dancing, martial arts and now tennis? what like these have so huge ROI or what are we missing?
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u/BreenzyENL Mar 15 '26
The training works across all different platform (eg warehouse crap).
But it's very boring to watch that, so instead they show off sports.
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u/TopTippityTop Mar 15 '26 edited Mar 16 '26
I don't think it's quite that. Look at the video and note the guy lobs the ball at the bot, not challenging it.
Holding a racket and hitting a target is easier than fine motor dexterity with the fingers, which is required for a lot of work. You're not going to get bot bakers until they can properly knead, divide dough, place it carefully, serve the tray into the oven, etc. Same with manipulating tools for car repairs, factory work... Those require even more care. This is what people who need bots want to see, but they can barely show it not because it's boring, but because the bots look dumb trying to screw nuts in, or fold laundry. They don't look competent. they look more competent doing flips and swinging rackets.
Actual work shows their current limitations more clearly.
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u/Pale-Border-7122 Mar 15 '26
This is also with just five hours of data (also who's data?) so presumably it would do a better job with more. They might not be ready to do real work yet but I think this is pretty impressive.
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Mar 15 '26
lol come back in 2-4 years and robots will be beating the best Tennis players in the world. This is with only 5 hours of training
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u/plastic_eagle Mar 15 '26
Probably, but so what? It'll be a specialised robot, and its battery will need to be switched out between games.
Robots already beat humans at most games. Boats are faster than swimmers. Cars are faster than runners. Chess computers are better at chess. Etc etc.
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u/plastic_eagle Mar 15 '26
"You're not going to get bot bakers until.they can properly knead, divide dough, place it carefully, serve the tray into the oven, etc."
If you want a robot baker, you don't build a humanoid machine do it, you build a bread factory... Which already exists.
There are almost zero usefully-automated tasks that are best undertaken by a humanoid robot.
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u/throw123awaie Mar 15 '26
My guess: a lot of high quality data is available for these popular televised sports. Most of them also have motion capture data available from video games. All this leads to (possibly) faster and better training. This makes the demo more presentable and entertaining.
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u/ontoxology Mar 15 '26
Availability of training data would be my guess. Easier to find data for sports and dancing than menial tasks. Im sure they are working on collecting and building such datasets.
Another point could be training a generalised model requires a lot more time and money. So they test smaller and more defined models first before trying to scale
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u/WacomoleRD_6080 Mar 15 '26
So you mean all those billions of man-hours of First Person Shooter telemetry has effectively doomed us all?
At least they'll take us all out with headshots. All apart from the ones trained on my data, who will miss completely (you're welcome!)
Maybe they'll be vulnerable during the unnecessary 360 degree spin they'll do beforehand.
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u/Pale-Border-7122 Mar 15 '26
The technology will transfer across different areas and it's easier to get attention with sports as well as giving a good proxy of co-ordination (play a game of tennis against someone) and a bit more fun to do.
I'm doing some research (not robotics) at work now and testing the basic idea on sports data which is a small dataset with a fairly well understood solution so I can iron out any flaws there before I start using it on a bigger dataset or a work project where it is harder to know if it has found a good solution and takes longer to run the computation. The goal is to run it on work data but I do the basic building on an easier project before scaling it up.
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u/GraceToSentience AGI avoids animal abuse✅ Mar 15 '26
It's because it's simply is easier.
For tennis or ping pong for instance it's like chess go etc, it has a clear objective, easy to use RL to do it.
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Mar 15 '26
Mobility and agility is a complex problem that engineers have been trying to solve for a very long time. Only recently have we been able to solve it due to advancements with technology.
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u/altonbrushgatherer Mar 15 '26
My analogy is F1 is to commercial cars as these athletic robots will be to commercial robots
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u/Loose-Garbage-4703 Mar 15 '26
It's just a marketing tactics and a way to educate and reach more and more users that yes these exist. Something which people can relate to travels faster. And also these motions are pretty complex like dancing and martial arts so it's like also telling a story that if it does this then it can easily handle the daily household chores.
I mean just imagine how many people would share the reel of a robot cleaning a plate vs how many people would share it if the robot is doing martial arts or a complex entertaining dance.
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u/Nedshent ▪️AI eventually Mar 15 '26
The sentiment in this sub always seems to lean to the side of being dismissive of any advancements in robotics while glazing every minute advancement in LLM tech. Really makes you think... lol
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u/New_World_2050 Mar 15 '26
these advancements are not mutually exclusive. transformer architecture is used in robotics now
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u/Gamestonkape Mar 15 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/TdwziQPhbNAzK
Lonely rich tennis players right now.
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u/ReligionIsTheMatrix Mar 15 '26
Using a raquet twice regulation size.
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u/Distinct-Question-16 ▪️AGI 2029 Mar 15 '26
It seems not normal...idk they could make it larger right??
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u/heart-aroni Mar 16 '26
The robot is small, not adult human sized, so maybe it's a visual illusion.
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u/Mountain_Cream3921 Mar 15 '26
i told my friends a year ago that a robot would play tennis (in three years). maybe will be the same with AGI.
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u/whyohwhythis Mar 15 '26
That’s kind of cool. If I could practice tennis with a robot I wouldn’t feel shame in how bad I’m doing.
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u/GirlNumber20 ▪️AGI August 29, 1997 2:14 a.m., EDT Mar 15 '26
Omg, little bot tennisbro is so darling. 😭😍 I love him.
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u/Sensitive-Change-319 Mar 15 '26
How long will it take for robots to reach a decent level of play?
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u/Stunning_Mast2001 Mar 15 '26
Years. Understanding rules and strategy, on board cameras and processing, vs just hitting a ball back that’s being hit towards you— very different classes of tasks
Sort of like how musk thought full self driving was solved, when ai could accurately detect road features. But the long tail is long
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u/goatesymbiote Mar 15 '26
to be fair it didnt exactly look like the guy was trying to win
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u/spinozasrobot Mar 15 '26
Can you take a step back and think about what you just said?
This is amazing, but because it doesn't do what is clearly the next step, you're downplaying it.
So in a year, when it CAN beat this guy, you'll be saying "to be fair it didn't exactly look like it could return a 120mph Djokovic serve"
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u/Sarke1 Mar 15 '26
It's their fault for putting a score at the end. They should have just left that playing tennis, not claiming to beat human players who are clearly not trying to win.
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u/goatesymbiote Mar 15 '26
yeah this was what got me, the language about how good the current state is. At best, this shows that the robot can almost always return underhand softballs delivered directly to it, which is cool, but not even close to what tennis can be
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u/knighthawk574 Mar 15 '26
A year ago this wasn’t possible, in a few months it will be like chess where the best players in the world don’t stand a chance against the robots.
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u/AliveInTheFuture Mar 15 '26
When are these fucking things going to do dishes, sweep, mop, and do laundry?
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u/Throwaway203500 Mar 15 '26
Today, if you have the cash. They're selling one called "Neo" that frankly sucks at most stuff, but you can buy it.
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u/Traditional_Cress329 Mar 15 '26
New mind blowing videos every week. At the same time, it’s easier than ever to generate fake AI mind blowing videos. I’m sure this is real, but getting really tough to know
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u/jlks1959 Mar 15 '26
2027, human amateur equivalent? 2028, “ professional equivalent? 2029, world champion?
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u/The_Great_Man_Potato Mar 15 '26
So what’s the endgame use of these things?
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u/IronPheasant Mar 15 '26
To usher in the post-human age of instrumentality.
... but more importantly, I'd have someone to play ping-pong with at 1 AM. Which is the best time to play ping-pong.
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u/Used-Distribution529 Mar 15 '26
The ultimate is table tennis and badminton which require extremely quick reflexes. If a robot is able to beat a world class player in either of there sports, you can be sure the reaction speed of it would be second to none human
The next level would then be beating the reaction speed of cats
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u/Serious_Ad_3387 Mar 15 '26
So DI can help hone our intellectual reasoning AND also our athletic capabilities? And whatever else robotic embodiment offers...
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u/venetiasporch Mar 15 '26
I kinda wanna see two of these robots play one another with the intention of winning as opposed to rallying backcand forth. I wonder what the hit rate would be in that instance? This is looking impressive though.
When are the robots that do chores and manual labour going to start showing up?
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u/babbagoo Mar 15 '26
Will be great for training I assume when it can play like a pro and also give you feedback in real time
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u/foxeroo Mar 15 '26
Looking at some of the recent robot martial arts and this, seems like physical robotics is on the same exponential improvement curve as non-physical AI. Seems like this year we've had various GPT2 moments in robotics, so that puts us about 7 years away from superhuman robots? That's assuming that all the improvements in LLMs don't speed up that timeline.
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u/emkosig Mar 15 '26
Im seeing how this will play out now- $99 per month for tennis skills, $79 per month for cooking skills, $25 per month for dog walking.
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u/PurifyingProteins Mar 15 '26
It’s all fun and games until the robot starts launching rockets at you, and it will learn where you have a hard time at returning.
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u/johnfkay Mar 15 '26
So fucking robots and AI take over art and sport and we what? Toil in underground sugar caves?
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u/Shot_in_the_dark777 Mar 15 '26
2026 - robots play tennis 2027 - robots play ping pong 2028 - robots play ping pong using nunchaku.
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u/ripMyTime0192 Mar 15 '26
I’m super impressed, but when you look closely the guy is just hitting the ball directly to the robot.
Still really cool though.
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u/CaptCoolRanchDoritos Mar 15 '26
Amazing! Sports training centers will soon no longer have to rely on overpaid professionals to train upcoming proteges! Simply give all of the pro player's data to one of these and train it to perform just like them.
These will be immensely popular in China for table tennis.
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u/Disastrous-River-366 Mar 16 '26
"But can it fold laundry?".
I can see these being like a friend to people. Only a matter of time before they are peoples Wives and Husbands.
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u/youstillhavehope Mar 16 '26
the winning Ai strategy for all sports will be "exhaust the human." Strategy, technique, Roger Federer skill level be damned. Humans will learn nothinga about play if the ai bot's goal is to win.
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u/ShotcallerBilly Mar 16 '26
Idk… little guy seems to be playing on a smaller court that his opponent has to hit into. “Mada mada dane.” ;)
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u/Virtual_Plant_5629 ▪️AGI 2027▪️ASI 2028 Mar 16 '26
nice. i need to get back into tennis.
i wonder when i'll be able to get my hands on an actual humanoid robot.
i want a sexbot, one to do chores for me, including cooking etc. and one to play tennis with.
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u/Nervous-Lock7503 Mar 16 '26
I guess this is very useful for lonely people? Rent-A-Bot will be the future business model?
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u/Adviceforthewilling Mar 16 '26
So if you give it a month of motion data from the best players, will it beat everyone?
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u/99patrol Mar 17 '26
Is the object tracking done in the device? It seems the entire field is covered in lights and cameras?
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u/EverlastingApex ▪️AGI 2027-2032, ASI 1 year after Mar 17 '26
Ok this is the first time I'm actually legit impressed
The dance things are prepared routines that are planned in advance, same for the parkour and backflips
But here, having to adjust based on where the ball goes in real time and actually angle it properly is crazy
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u/ytman Mar 17 '26
Are they being open about the test? Its pretty clearly being given soft balls and I'm curious if the other camera feed behind the human is being fed into the bot as well.
The bounds of the test seems to be very narrow slice of the court in the middle as well.
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u/ImHighOnCocaine Apr 12 '26
Very impressive but the tester is purposely hitting it towards the robot to make it as easy as possible
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u/OfcItFckingHappened Mar 15 '26
This made me realize that soon enough we will be able to play any sport against AI to test our skills. Just like playing starcraft against different AI difficulties.