Robot Partner for Table Tennis Practice
Xu Xin plays table tennis with AI Xu Xin. (PHOTO: VCG)
By ZONG Shihan
AI Xu Xin is an arm-type serving robot that can imitate Olympic table tennis champion Xu Xin to hit the ball, enabling table tennis fans to enjoy higher quality training services.
AI Xu Xin, based on Alibaba Cloud computing services, was designed after analyzing the video data of Xu Xin's matches and can reproduce Xu Xin's play.
Compared to traditional ball machines that simply shoot balls out of a pipe so that players can hit them for practice, AI Xu Xin can wield a real racket and spin a ball. It can fix the rotation and speed level of the racket, giving players a bigger challenge and improving the training level.
The robot is currently deployed in the Hangzhou Asian Games Village for table tennis players to get some practice.
