The topic of the recent Asian Games is basically a hot search in two days and a headline in three days.
The whole city of Hangzhou was also infected, and the sports atmosphere was strong.
The most intuitive embodiment is that the executive sister always complains that the nearby badminton court is too difficult to book, and the number of people exercising in the park has become more visible to the naked eye.
Even, a few brothers in our company had a hot head, and also set a set of ping pong table + automatic ball machine combination in the studio.
Tired of work, do two rounds, focus on a healthy fish.
And when we were practicing ball skills behind closed doors, I heard that Olympic champion Xu Xin came to Hangzhou.
He came during the Asian Games to compete with his AI in table tennis to see how successful AI can achieve.
Maybe you're a little confused when you hear this, but that's right, we also reacted this way at first.
But I can't bear to open the Little Red Book in those two days, and I can brush the notes of "Binjiang Chance Encounter Xu Xin", or "Go to the scene to challenge AI Xu Xin", and then be abused by AI and cry.
The person who posted sighed that there were many people who challenged Xu Xin, the AI was so powerful, and Hangzhou was so lively.
Those who commented could only envy, saying that tickets and Asian Games tickets were too difficult to grab, and sorrow and joy were not connected.
Source: Little Red Book: One by One, Little Tomato
This made the whole brother more curious, and then brushed a few related news, only to know - it turned out that this is Alibaba, the official partner of the Hangzhou Asian Games, launched a "Alibaba Intelligent Table Tennis - Cloud Champion Challenge" offline in Hangzhou.
The competition lasted for more than half a month, with the participation of the whole people, and the venue was in Binjiang INtime Department Store, and anyone could participate.
The final challenge object is the "Xu Xin AI Intelligent Serving Machine" that has deeply learned the serving skills of Olympic champion Xu Xin.
Source Station B: Cyber Table Tennis
The people's artist in our eyes, the "strongest man in ping-pong" in the eyes of the opponent of the competition.
In the face of the ball sent by Xu Xin, how many do you think you can catch?
Obviously, everyone is very curious, so since the beginning of the challenge, the scene is basically red flags, and there are many people.
The Hangzhou citizens who come in to experience are far more than the young and middle-aged people in the mall.
The age group covers grandpas and aunts in their 80s, and children who are pushed into strollers, most of whom are admiring.
And their purpose is only one, to compare with "Xu Xin".
The reason why the bad critic knows so much about the scene is also because he went there.
After all, the challenge held by Ali is in Hangzhou, and my colleague Jiuge is still a fan of Xu Xin, so the two of us picked a working day with few individuals and sneaked over.
Before going, the two of us visually verified through video analysis that the serving level of this robot may be "OK", and it should be able to hang at the level of Jiuge.
But who would have thought, when he arrived at the scene, the bad critic Jun this kind of ping-pong little white don't talk about catching the ball, even the ball can't be seen clearly, only know that there are white shadows flashing in front of him.
In the face of various side spins played by Xu Xin's AI serve, pulling left and right, and finally exhausting me enough, I scored a total of more than 500 points.
And the level of table tennis enthusiast Jiuge, whose level far exceeds that of the bad critics, is also very difficult in the process of receiving the ball, and the first round of challenge scores are more than 3800, which is probably Xu Xin's 3% skill (for reference only).
Based on the batting data, each person will have an exclusive video report
The highest challenge result of the day, Jiuge stayed at more than 7,000 points.
To give you a first-person perspective to feel the feeling, the real ball speed I personally think is 1.5 times faster than this.
So, here's the problem.
How many points can Xu Xin himself score against his own AI?
The answer is more than 147000 points...
However, just this score that Xu Xin casually scored has been unbeatable.
Even the folk master "Uncle and Aunt Group", who started with a ball age of more than 50 years, finally tried many times, and finally broke through the 130,000-point mark by working together to fight two and one.
It seems that he is the only one who can defeat Xu Xin.
Interestingly, because the venue is in a shopping mall, it is particularly easy to attract passers-by.
For example, the bad critic met several spectators, standing in a row like watching people play chess in the park.
They observe, analyze, and gesture, and the thief invests.
It means that you want to understand the opponent (AI Xu Xin) and then come in to challenge.
The reason is that this intelligent ball machine is very challenging.
It's not an exaggeration to say it's a professional competitive game.
The on-site challenge is divided into three stages, and the difficulty is basically increasing step by step, if you don't have a point of table tennis foundation, it is easy to be beaten dumbfounded.
Bad critics carefully observed the technique of the AI ball machine and found that the design was clever.
First of all, the robot adopts the humanoid design principle, and each axis of rotation can simulate the waist, shoulder, elbow and wrist joints of a person.
In the actual combat serve, the robot simulates the way of hitting the table tennis ball with the left hand, and drives the racket with the right hand to hit the table tennis.
Together, the two can achieve professional serves such as topspin or downspin balls of various speeds, landing points and arcs.
Compared with the traditional extrusion ball machine, the ball served by this robot is more similar to the real combat serve.
At the same time, athletes can also obtain information such as the landing point and rotation of the serve in advance through the action of the robot, which can achieve the purpose of actual combat training.
In particular, the programmable design of the robot also supports user-defined serve routines to achieve flexible training.
By the way, it is also the world's first humanoid serving robot with a real racket.
In the words of the master on the scene, this machine "has a ball feeling", and it is no different from a real person when fighting.
Live ordinary ball machine
Don't look at the addition of a small racket, but the amount of calculation behind it is directly doubled.
Because it is necessary to additionally calculate the landing point of the ball on the racket, and obtain data such as the rebound route and the strength of the shot.
In order to simulate the "national hand" ball sense to the greatest extent.
The difficulty of the third stage is quite challenging
In short, after feeling the championship serve, the bad critic really felt what is called the strength gap.
In casual chats with several Ali employees on the scene, they also made clear to me the original intention of doing this -
Compared to watching the champion play on the screen, it is obvious that he personally plays the match, and he can feel the competitive charm of the national ball.
I believe that whether it is a child who has just learned to hold a racket, a talented player in a professional youth team, or a master who has been playing for decades, he has the desire to compete at the peak of the professional arena.
Obviously, Xu Xin can't fight with everyone, so let's use technology to think of a way. ”
To be honest, if this is changed to other sports, it may not be possible.
From babbling children to old people with gray hair, it is estimated that there are only national balls and table tennis that can be called true national sports.
From this point, you can also see the considerations behind Ali.
On the one hand, it is for the sake of the audience, so that everyone who comes can experience it.
On the other hand, it is still for the audience. Let more young people have a rare opportunity to re-contact and understand table tennis, and many children's interest in table tennis may be such a boost.
In crowded cities, we also need to put down our mobile phones and rekindle our blood.
For the words "playing with the champion", Ali's activity group is also racking his brains.
They first found the most popular Olympic champion of the people, Xu Xin.
Then, he found a well-known domestic embodied intelligent company, Pombert, to use AI to specifically learn Xu Xin's ever-changing ball path to ensure that the user experience is different from ordinary entertainment competition.
As for Xu Xin's strength and fame, there is no need to introduce it, with the gold medal trick "forehand twisting", as well as ingenious short swings and other techniques, he played a variety of stage scenes that shocked the world.
The masterstroke of the replica champion needs to be supported by Alibaba Cloud's computing power, calculate Xu Xin's hitting data, and then transcribe the complex result into the robot's output instructions, so that the machine can learn Xu Xin's moves.
It can be seen that if you want to pursue the championship configuration, you can't do it by anyone.
Xu Xin customized interactive videos for the event
This event let everyone know what is a high-tech and intelligent sports robot.
On the surface, the "Alibaba Smart Table Tennis-Cloud Champion Challenge" is a call for old and young masters to mobilize together, spread the spirit of table tennis competition, and be grounded.
But it's much more than that.
Just to say one thing, at present, the intelligent ball machine with the blessing of Xu Xin's AI is being put into use in a table tennis training hall in Shanghai, and it is expected to join the training plan of more professional teams in the future.
It can be seen that after this event, "technology helps sports" is also slowly sprouting up.
Before some technology sports applications, most of them were sports data. For example, use the force plate to measure the height of the athlete's bounce, explosiveness and other data, and then analyze the training.
And now, technology has taken it a step further and made it possible to champion AI opponents. Although it is not possible to perfectly replicate Xu Xin's ball skills at this stage, the most important 0 has been completed, and the next step is to work hard towards 1.
We all know that it has long been commonplace to use AI to practice in the Go world, and many strong players have been born, so the same method, why not in the field of table tennis?
Even, bad critics feel that the AI intelligence of a series of projects such as badminton, volleyball, basketball and so on is not completely unimaginable.
In addition, there are still too many possibilities for the application of technology sports, in addition to sparring, such as in the physical education examination, AI robots can also replace instructors; Or AI coaches to customize exclusive training plans for athletes; There are even various possibilities such as simulating the situation in advance and making pre-match result calculations.
Speaking of which, it is actually very close to the concept of e-sports.
E-sports, as the official layout of the Olympic future, has traces in Ali's offline challenge.
It should be noted that the E-sports e-sports here is not a video game (Gaming) on a mobile phone.
The difference between the two is that the input instructions of the latter rely on the touch screen and the keyboard and mouse, but the former still requires the player to use "body movement".
According to IOC President Bach, e-sports is an important part of the future development of sports.
Competing in sports in a digital environment through technologies such as VR allows young people to use technology to keep fit, which is more in line with the Olympic spirit.
Bad critics feel that E-sports will become an inevitable trend.
In the context of the combination of science and technology and sports, the Olympic Organizing Committee has tried to hold several virtual sports competitions, and has also achieved quite outstanding performance.
At the same time, E-sports exists to convey a message to people immersed in the digital world: moving and sweating are the core of sports that have never changed.
And sports are always about being faster, higher, stronger, and healthier.
Alibaba's use of Xu Xin's fast ball path this time has made many people personally feel the "technique of champion AI", and also let everyone see the phased achievements of science and technology sports, and even, let E-sports meet our eyes in advance.
At first glance, Alibaba's challenge of dispatching top resources from all walks of life is using technology to respond to urban activities under the "Smart Asian Games".
But in fact, this is more like a small test of the "opening ceremony", which opened the era of national E-sports.
As for the future of Tech X Sports, the feature film has just begun, and the progress bar is still long.