A paddle-wielding robot is so adept at playing table tennis that it is posing a tough challenge to elite human players and sometimes defeating them, according to a new study in the journal Nature that shows how advances in artificial intelligence are making robots more agile.

Sony has unveiled 'Ace', an AI-powered table tennis robot capable of defeating elite human players, marking the first expert-level robotic performance in a competitive physical sport. Using nine cameras, advanced sensors, and reinforcement learning, Ace ...

The Sony AI project focuses on table tennis, an activity that has resisted the kind of breakthroughs seen in digital environments. While AI has already outperformed