Sony's AI Ace table tennis robot runs ROS 2, beats pro player

The biggest news from this week's ROS community update is that Sony's AI Ace table tennis robot — which made the cover of Nature and famously beat a professional human opponent — is powered by ROS 2 under the hood. The robot uses advanced perception and motion control, and its reliance on the open-source Robot Operating System highlights ROS 2's growing maturity for real-time, high-performance applications. The revelation came courtesy of community member @tomoyafujita and adds to a series of high-profile ROS deployments.

Beyond the Sony robot, the robotics industry saw major corporate moves. Humanoid maker Agility Robotics is going public through a SPAC merger, signaling investor confidence in bipedal robots. Mantis Robotics launched a dual-arm, fenceless collaborative robot designed for safe human-robot interaction, while Bear Robotics acquired Kinisi Robotics to boost its physical AI capabilities. The newsletter also notes the upcoming ROSCon Global in Toronto (Sept 22-24) with early bird pricing until July 12, plus dozens of new ROS 2 packages, tools, and tutorials — from spray-painting simulation plugins to a zero-dependency Occupancy Grid Editor and a pure-Rust DDS implementation called ZeroDDS.