'It totally blew my mind': Sony's Project Ace robot plays ping pong better than the pros and could mark a major robotics turning point

This robot can play ping-pong at an elite level

24 Apr 2026, 20:30 by https://www.techradar.com/uk/author/lance-ulanoff · TechRadar

News By Lance Ulanoff published 24 April 2026

(Image credit: Sony AI)

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A robot just beat some elite table tennis players
Sony AI's Project Ace is good at competing against unpredictable human players
Success here could mean it'll be easier to use AI to train future robots to handle the real world

In competitive table tennis, the ball can travel at speeds of up to 70mph, and it can go anywhere. Sure, there's some predictability based on the strike, spin, and how the ball hits the table, but there are also infinite possibilities that now, it appears, a robot has mastered.

Sony AI's Project Ace is the first robot to beat multiple elite-level table tennis players in an International Table Tennis Federation-style arena and under the watchful eyes of licensed referees.

In a new Nature Article, Outplaying elite table tennis players with an autonomous robot, Sony AI scientist describe their work and how they built and used AI to train a robot, "Project Ace", to not just play table tennis, but do so at a pro-level.

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"Ace achieved three victories in five matches against elite players, along with competitive performances in the remaining matches. These results demonstrate the potential of physical AI agents to outperform human experts in interactive, real-time tasks," wrote the scientists.

Project Ace is a canny combination of "high-speed perception," a control system based on reinforcement learning (rewarding good behavior), and "high-speed robot hardware."

No feet, but a wicked backhand

Ace doesn't look like a human ping pong player you've ever seen. Instead, it glides in four directions on a custom track system, while its trunk rotates 360 degrees, and the fully articulated arm and wrist adjust on the fly to both serve and return the ball. You may have seen table-tennis-playing robots before (I recall seeing a lumbering one at CES 2026), but not like this. The speed alone is astonishing.

Still, it's the AI-based reinforcement learning and training simulation that makes Project Ace special and successful. In training, it was able to game out all sorts of play scenarios. It even practiced against a virtualized version of itself. But it's the "model-free" reinforcement learning that's, at least in part, allowing Project Ace to adapt to unpredictable, elite, human competitors.

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