Robots capable of playing Ping Pong with humans have been around
for more than 20 years. In 1988 MIT published "A Robot Ping-Pong
Player: Experiments in Real-Time Intelligent Control (AI)" by
Russell L. Andersson. Ping Pong is interesting to roboticists
because it requires understanding of dynamic environments,
accurate real-time vision, fast actuation, and intelligence to
play the game with a winning strategy. (Andersson went on to
write an IEEE paper on an aggressive trajectory generator for
robot ping pong.) Andersson's machine, built at Bell Labs, was
made from a bulky industrial robot arm combined with multiple
video cameras, used to reconstruct a 3D view of the playing
space. Since then things have improved quite a bit. Andersson's
project was recreated by Japanese researchers using a PC, two
cameras, and a four axis SCARA arm with good results.
Mechatronics students at the University of Adelaide also built a
modern version of Andersson's Ping Pong robot. The most
impressive robot ping pong player to da