Researchers at ETH Zürich’s Robotic Systems Lab have achieved a remarkable breakthrough by teaching four-legged robots to play badminton, demonstrating unprecedented whole-body coordination through reinforcement learning. The footage shows these legged manipulators tracking and striking shuttlecocks whilst maintaining perfect balance—a unified control policy that simultaneously coordinates perception, locomotion and precise arm movements. This research proves that robots can now predict object trajectories, navigate dynamically and interact with human players in fast-paced sporting scenarios, opening new possibilities for dexterous robots in dynamic environments.
