A research team from ETH Zurich has taught the four-legged robot ANYmal to play badminton – including precise arm movements, quick reflexes and nimble footwork.
How do you get a robot to move, see and hit a shuttlecock back at the same time? A team of researchers at ETH Zurich led by Marco Hutter, Professor of Robotic Systems, have been studying this question. They have developed a control system that coordinates the leg movements, strokes and camera view. The robot ANYmal tracks the shuttlecock with its two cameras, predicts its flight trajectory and navigates to the right spot to intercept and return shots. In this video, Andrei Cramariuc, a postdoctoral researcher in Hutter’s team, explains how they trained the robot and the challenges they had to overcome.
Reference
Ma Y, Cramariuc A, Farshidian F, Hutter M. Learning coordinated badminton skills for legged manipulators. Science Robotics, 10 (2025), doi: external page 10.1126/scirobotics.adu3922j