This tour de force in experimental robotics paves the way toward understanding dynamic environments in vision and robotics. It describes the first robot able to play, and even beat, human ping-pong players.Constructing a machine to play ping-pong was proposed years ago as a particularly difficult problem requiring fast, accurate sensing and actuation, and the intelligence to play the game. The research reported here began as a series of experiments in building a true real-time vision system. The ping-pong machine incorporates sensor and processing techniques as well as the techniques...