With everyday advancements in technology and constant upgrades and testing by researchers, artificial intelligence might be capable of things beyond our understanding. In a recent development, Google's AI company, DeepMind set a match between their robot and 29 skilled table tennis players. They conducted competitive matches against 29 table tennis players of various skill levels, including beginner, intermediate, advanced, and advanced+, as established by a professional table tennis instructor, in order to assess our agent's level of proficiency.
As per the research, "humans played three games against the robot following standard table tennis rules with some modifications because the robot is physically unable to serve the ball. Against all opponents, the robot won 45% of matches and 46% of games. Broken down by skill level, we see the robot won all matches against beginners, lost all matches against the advanced and advanced+ players, and won 55% of matches against intermediate players." (Also Read: AI dating no longer a far-fetched reality, thanks to this Japanese startup. All you need to know)
Take a look at the video of the robot playing against the human here:
Barney J. Reed, Professional Table Tennis Coach told DeepMind, "Truly awesome to watch the robot play players of all levels and styles. Going in our aim was to have the robot be at an intermediate level. Amazingly it did just that, all the hard work paid off. I feel the robot exceeded even my expectations. It was a true honour and pleasure to be a part of this research. I have learned so much and am very thankful for everyone I had the pleasure of working with on this."
{{/usCountry}}Barney J. Reed, Professional Table Tennis Coach told DeepMind, "Truly awesome to watch the robot play players of all levels and styles. Going in our aim was to have the robot be at an intermediate level. Amazingly it did just that, all the hard work paid off. I feel the robot exceeded even my expectations. It was a true honour and pleasure to be a part of this research. I have learned so much and am very thankful for everyone I had the pleasure of working with on this."
{{/usCountry}}The motivation to conduct this experiment was to check "human-level performance in terms of accuracy, speed, and adaptability". DeepMind also informed, "no prior research in robotic TableTennis has addressed the challenge of a robot playing a full competitive game against previously unseen humans".