This four-legged AI robot plays badminton with real people
What's the story
A team of scientists from ETH Zurich has developed an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered robot that can play badminton.
The innovative machine, named ANYmal, was built on a quadruped platform by ETH spinoff company ANYbotics.
With elastic actuators in its legs and a weight of around 50kg, the robot resembles a miniature giraffe holding a racket in its mouth.
Robot evolution
ANYmal has a width of half a meter
ANYmal has a width of half a meter and length of less than a meter.
The team fitted an arm with multiple degrees of freedom on top of the robot, which is used to hold and swing a badminton racket.
The robot's brain was developed using reinforcement learning algorithms, allowing it to learn how to move on its own in a simulated world—a badminton court where its digital twin chased shuttlecocks with a racket.
Skill development
Robot learns to position itself on the court
The training process involved a perception model based on real camera data, teaching the robot to keep the shuttlecock in view while accounting for noise and object-tracking errors.
After completing its training, ANYmal learned to position itself on the court and developed fall avoidance strategies.
However, when pitted against humans, it was found to be an amateur player at best due to its slower reaction time of about 0.35 seconds after an opponent hit a shuttlecock.
Enhancement plans
Upgrades planned for the robot
To improve reaction time, the team plans to have ANYmal predict shuttlecock trajectories based on the opponent's body position instead of waiting to see the shuttlecock itself.
They also want to enhance its perception by fitting it with more advanced hardware like event cameras—vision sensors that detect movement with ultra-low latencies in microseconds.
Other possible upgrades include faster and more capable actuators.