London - Scientists have developed a robot that learns to play ping-pong from humans and improves as it competes against them.
Katharina Muelling and colleagues at the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany equipped a robotic arm with a camera to watch the playing area.
Initially, Muelling physically guided the arm through different shots to return incoming balls.
The arm was then left to draw on its training to return balls hit by a human opponent.
When the ball was in a position it had not seen before, the arm used its library of shots to improvise new ones.
After an hour of unassisted practice, the system successfully returned 88 percent of shots, New Scientist reported.
Other robots have played table tennis in the past, but none have used human demonstration to learn the game.
Ales Ude of the Jozef Stefan Institute in Slovenia said that doing so allows robots to play more like people.
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