This doesn’t really need much premise. A group of students at Zhejiang University in China created two robots, Wu and Kong, that can play table tennis with relative fluidity and reflex.
Wu and Kong are equipped with eye-mounted cameras that send 120 images per second to the robot’s processor, which calculates ball trajectory and landing position almost instantly. Then, this information is sent to the robot’s hydraulic joints, which respond to send the ball back.
The robots still have a long way to go. They aren’t fast enough, and can’t move from side to side, so they probably won’t be winning any table tennis tournaments in the near future. However, the original intent has been achieved: the robot is an effective training aid, because it is able to return the ball consistently to the same place.
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