Scientists have developed a robot tennis player for professional training (4 photos + 1 video)

Scientists from the Georgia Institute of Technology (USA) have developed a new robot called ESTHER.

In the future, the bot may become a sparring partner for professional tennis players. Someone's gotta be good run!





The moment tennis fans have been waiting for Finally it has arrived: the Wimbledon Championship starts next week. IN this year, players such as Petra Kvitova, Novak Djokovic will enter the court and Carlos Alcaraz. But very soon they may face tough competition from a new challenger - a robot!

Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed new robot named ESTHER (Experimental Sport Tennis Wheelchair Robot) that can move around the court and even return shots person.

The developers believe that in the future their bot will be able to serve training partner for professional players, shooting the need for a human partner and to the exclusion of any associated psychological pressure.

The bot is the brainchild of Matthew Gomboley from Technological Georgia Institute, Associate Professor of Robotics at the School of Interactive computing. He wanted to develop a more difficult training problem than a stationary ball delivery system that would function as always duty sparring partner or even teamed up in doubles matches.



The result was the ESTHER robot tennis player - in fact, wheelchair equipped with an impact tracking system and ball hitting device. She can run towards the ball at a speed 10 meters per second and is potentially capable of beating a person.

The stroller is able to quickly move around the court and take ground strike position. ESTHER high torque motors can surpass the average acceleration of a tennis player running from one end courts to another, which suggests the possibility of replaying human opponents in future designs.





The device was named after the famous tennis player on wheelchairs of Esther Verger, who ranked first in the world among women in wheelchair tennis from 1999 to retirement in 2013 year.



The creators of ESTHER plan to do more improvement of the robot, introducing a simulation of the experience of playing against highly skilled adversary.

ESHER opens up many exciting research opportunities in the field of simulation training, reinforcement learning, cinematic planning, human-robot cooperation and many more. Training with a human opponent is psychologically more tense. An approximation to the simulation of real match conditions can help athletes improve performance.