A robot beat elite human players at table tennis, a landmark victory in a competitive sport.
Sony Ace defeated top amateurs in three matches out of five, although it lost twice against pros. It follows a running robot beating the human half-marathon record, albeit in a highly controlled environment.
Ace had it easy to some extent — it has no legs so needn’t worry about balance, and has nine video cameras around the table, while humans tend to have only one head and two eyes. But it could herald rapid progress in robotics, much as DeepMind’s autonomous Go player did in AI in 2016. Physical AI is a growth area: Tesla announced plans to boost robotics spending this year.