Four-legged robot plays badminton with humans

Researchers at ETH Zurich’s Robotic Systems Lab have created a four-legged robot, named ANYmal-D, capable of playing badminton with humans. The robot, described in Science Robotics, uses a stereo camera, a dynamic arm, and a reinforcement-learning-based controller to track and hit a shuttlecock. The team also implemented a “perception noise model” to help the robot adapt to real-world play, TechXplore has reported. Testing showed that ANYmal-D could move around the court and rally with human players for up to 10 consecutive shots.