Tennis robot rallies with you – and then critiques your game

Technology has come for many jobs, and one that it seems to be targeting is that of the tennis coach. The Acemate S10 builds on other models that can fire balls at you on the court – by being able to return those balls to mimic a rally.

"Unlike monocular cameras, Acemate Tennis Robot S10’s binocular 4K vision captures depth and speed – just like human eyes – enabling precise 3D tracking and real-time shot analysis with centimeter-level accuracy," the company writes. "With AI visual tracking, 4x metal-core Mecanum wheels with rubber treads, and a ball net, Acemate Tennis Robot S10 moves and rallies like a real partner – no wearables or setup needed. Just hit and play."

The Acemate S10 is designed to act as an autonomous tennis partner, able to move around the court, track your shots, catch them and hit them back over the net – as if you're playing a human holding a racquet. Instead, you're facing off against a mobile machine with a net and good aim.

The robot uses a pair of 4K cameras and onboard AI to monitor the ball in three dimensions. As you hit a shot, it predicts where the ball will land, moving into position using omnidirectional wheels and catching your ball in its net, before launching it back at you. The company says it can react in about 0.15 seconds and zip around the baseline as good as your casual tennis buddy.

The Acemate attempts to create more natural exchanges than existing robot tennis models. It can vary shot placement, speed, spin and trajectory, allowing players to work on their rallies, serves, overhead smashes and recovery. After your session on the court, the S10 delivers some hard truths about your gameplay, with statistics covering shot placement, accuracy, contact points, rally consistency and more. The companion app can then further the shame by generating reports that highlight your strengths and weaknesses, suggesting areas that might need some work.

I'll be testing this ambitious model out next week, and already know that my former good tennis game in my youth is beyond needing "some work" to improve it. But I look forward to sharing those data points, nonetheless. Speaking of data, the system can also sync with an Apple Watch to display session summaries that include statistics like duration, shot count and calories burned.

The Acemate app lets you adjust things like serve speed, spin, landing zones and rally difficulty, and the company says the robot can deliver flat, topspin and slice shots and lobs up to 8 m (26 ft) in height. It also functions on hard, clay and grass courts, and you should get around two hours o