Table Tennis robots

JinMeng Lai Asked 12 years ago

Hi Alois,

What is your advice on table tennis robots? Many thanks.

Alois Rosario Answered 12 years ago

Hi JinMeng,

I think they are useful if you don't have a training partner. they can be useful for learning the basic strokes and footwork. the main problem with them is that it is not realistic. When you are playing a game you are also seeing the cues from the other player. Their stroke their movement and other things that will help you to react and learn the game. You don't get that from training with a robot.

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JinMeng Lai Posted 12 years ago

Thank you very much

Mark Roberti Posted 10 years ago

I'm a little surprised by Alois's lukewarm response to the use of robots here and in a more recent video response. I started playing table tennis two years ago and got a robot about a year ago. The improvement in my game in the last year has been dramatic. As Alois correctly points out, it lets you improve your basic strokes and footwork. This is pretty much 90 percent of table tennis. It does not allow you to pick up cues from what your partner is doing, but it does allow you to pick up cues from what YOU are doing. So you can set the robot to different speeds and spins and when you hit the ball with your bat titled at a certain angle, you see the result and adjust. Sure, if you have a coach or partner who will do drills with you for 2 hours a day, that's better than a robot. But how many of us are lucky enough to have that? I love my robot. It has helped my game tremendously.

Mark R

Jeff Plumb from PingSkills Posted 10 years ago

Hi Mark,

Thanks for sharing your experience with the Robot. There is definitely a place for robots where you can't find anyone to play with.

I guess Alois was expressing his experience, and mine is the same too, if you do have a table tennis club near you then you'll often find players who are also looking to improve along with yourself. I get the feeling that people think multiball is a hard skill to learn but with some practice it can be learnt quickly. Alois and I both used a lot of multiball in our practice hence our bias towards that.

But it is great to hear your experiences and have them shared for other people to read about too.