This is so interesting. Especially since it's kinda weird to train a robot to mimicking human play. I wonder what a perfect robot what actually behave like.
It wouldn't need to split-step to activate muscles, the footwork would probably be minimal. I imagine a lot of different unusual looking swings to confuse human players, while still making perfect contact. It could make really late drop shots or even rotate the racket at the last moment for crazy angles.
The humans in the video shot easy balls to the robot, which returns more difficult balls. It's the human that is doing all the running. The robot is quite static. However with better software and better hardware is possible that the robot will be so fast that it will miss no ball, and so strong to return balls faster than any human can reach. So there is no need to play fine shots. That could be a goal if we want to provide automated training partners to humans. If we want to win games against humans, stronger and faster is more than enough.
I don't know much about tennis, but the perfect opponent is probably some form of slightly concave wall that will always bounce the ball into the court no matter the angle you send the ball at it
It wouldn't need to split-step to activate muscles, the footwork would probably be minimal. I imagine a lot of different unusual looking swings to confuse human players, while still making perfect contact. It could make really late drop shots or even rotate the racket at the last moment for crazy angles.
Would love to watch this.