- Galbot found an unprecedented way, called LATENT, to train robots
- Using "skill fragments", they trained a Unitree G1 robot to play tennis
- The robot developed relatively robust tennis skills based on this minimal training
Future Wimbledons in which a fifth-seeded tennis pro squares off against a sixth-seeded robot just transitioned from the realm of science fiction to something that feels inevitable.
How did we get here? Blame Galbot and its LATENT innovation.
The best robot athletes, those that can do karate, box each other, or do parkour, are either remotely controlled or highly scripted to perform a pre-programmed set of actions. Real-time competition against, say, a human opponent is thought to be difficult or impossible. But now Galbot and a team of researchers have done it: used minimal learning to teach a Unitree robot how to play tennis against an unpredictable human opponent.
Article continues belowThey call it "Learning Athletic Humanoid Tennis Skills from Imperfect Human Motion Data" (which they jury-rigged into LATENT). Instead of highly detailed robot training that captures the full range of human tennis skills, LATENT focuses on "motion fragments that capture the primitive skills used when playing tennis".
Somehow, the researchers figured out how to use these bits and pieces of tennis skills, or what they call "imperfect" data, to provide enough insight about "human primitive skills in tennis scenarios."
The robot, a Unitree G1, can then draw on those fragments to make sense of live gameplay and, according to researchers, "consistently strike incoming balls under a wide range of conditions and return them to target locations."
That's a dry way of describing what happens in the startling demonstration video in which a Unitree G1 robot adeptly plays — and sometimes outplays — a human tennis player.
As they note in the research abstract: "Our method achieves surprising results in the real world and can stably sustain multi-shot rallies with human players."
Now, you might watch the video and assume the human is going easy on the robot or even aiming the ball in the robot's direction. That's possible, but how do we account for the robot consistently returning the volley and purposely placing the ball where the human player is not? It looks downright competitive.
Obviously, the robot could be better. It often appears to be teetering on the brink of disaster, and that racket looks fused to its right arm. I'm not even certain how the robot would handle a shot that goes over its metal and plastic head.
Even so, from the ball return to a wicked backhand, the rapid footwork and even ability to remain upright, the Galbot/LATENT robot puts on quite a show.
It's not too hard to imagine where this leads. Give it time, and a robot like this could be playing exhibition matches against someone like Rafael Nadal.
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