Watch: AI-powered robot learns to play badminton against humans

An artificial intelligence-driven legged robot has been trained to play badminton against human opponents with impressive agility.

It has been developed by a Swiss-led team at ETH Zurich, who used reinforcement learning — a type of AI that improves decision-making by learning from repeated attempts.

The robot can follow the shuttlecock and hit it precisely in fast-paced games.

It accurately predicts shuttlecock trajectories, navigates the game area, and competes with human players.

Researcher Yuntao Ma believes it showcases AI’s potential to drive legged robots in complex tasks, which could pave the way for future advancements in autonomous, intelligent systems, including humanoids.