An advanced robot developed by Japanese electronics company, Omron, has recently been certified by Guinness World Records as the first robot table tennis tutor.
FORPHEUS (Future Omron Robotics Technology for Exploring Possibility of Harmonized Automation with Sinic Theoretics) used machine learning to assess the skills of a human player, adjust its game accordingly and provide tips to help opponents improve their technique.
First unveiled at the Ceatec electronics show in Japan in 2014, FORPHEUS has come a long way in the last three years, especially after developers made a breakthrough in Artificial Intelligence.
Originally designed to showcase Omron’s sensor technology, the table tennis-playing robot has now become a Guinness-certified tutor, thanks to machine learning. It analyses data like the human player’s movement, the speed of the ball and the trajectory to determine his opponent’s skill level, with about 90% accuracy. FORPHEUS then uses this information to adjust its play style – ‘slow and easy’ for beginners, ‘faster and more unpredictable’ for advanced players.
FORPHEUS is equipped with two vision sensors that identify the movement of the ball, and motion sensor which monitors the movement of the opponent.
“The robot is paying attention to the Ping-Pong ball obviously, but it is also paying attention to the player, so it uses facial recognition and also Artificial Intelligence (AI) and body language to be able to sense how good a player is.”
A controller analyses the speed of the ball at one thousand times per second, allowing to predict where it is going to land and react accordingly. The AI component can also determine the spot where the return from FORPHEUS will land with an accuracy of within 5 centimetres, projected on a screen so the human “students” can prepare and improve game.
The special net of FORPHEUS’ ping pong table also acts as a digital display, where the human players can see encouraging messages aimed to motivate them, like “Good job!” or “Hang in there!”, but also valuable tips aimed to help them step up their game.
“So the idea is that if you are not very good, like me, it will actually play a little bit easier. If you get better or someone better plays it will hit faster, it will make it more difficult so that your skill keeps getting better and better,” said Omron’s Marketing Manager, Keith Kersten.
Forpheus can read a Ping-Pong ball’s movement and position 80 times within the span of one second and uses AI to predict its opponent’s next move.
