Finally, an AI Robot Built for Me: The Acemate Tennis Robot
[post_content]
Disclaimer: This article has been automatically aggregated from
I am constantly on the lookout for ways to improve my tennis game. The Instagram algorithm feeds me tip after tip, and I try to pick up techniques and strategies from watching the pros. The problem is that I don’t practice enough to put anything I’ve gleaned from my phone or TV into, well, practice. It’s not that I don’t play enough tennis — I play regularly all year long — but when I’m on a tennis court, it’s to play a set or two with friends instead of drills to make my backhand stronger or volleys crisper.
With the Acemate S10 tennis robot, I might just have the thing I need to tune up my backhand and dial in my volleys. I’ve hit with it a few times over the past month, and it makes drills varied enough that practicing doesn’t become repetitive and boring. It has cameras and AI tracking to move and catch the balls coming off your racket, and the robot is surprisingly quick as it wheels around the court. If you squint, it can feel a little like rallying with a human hitting partner on the other side of the net.
If I weren’t on so many tennis-related group texts and played so often, I would probably drag the robot out to the court more often. I see the Acemate as a better fit for someone looking to get into the sport who doesn’t have a friend joining them on their tennis journey. The Acemate would also make a good addition to a coach’s repertoire to spice up clinics, and the robot’s cute design and friendly face are a natural fit for kids.
Before you find the ball in your court and decide to drop nearly $2,000 on the Acemate S10 tennis robot, let me tell you about my experience with it, what it does well and where it falls short.
The Acemate S10 looks like a simple, stationary ball machine that feeds balls to you from across the net. But once you return a ball to its side of the court, you’ll quickly discover that it can track the ball and move itself in front of it. The robot’s movement and AI-tracking ability are useful in a couple of ways.
For one, it makes it look and feel more like hitting against a human opponent because it’s responding to your shots. Instead of simply firing balls at you at a regular cadence, it shoots out the next one after catching your shot in its net (or after it misses and the ball goes by it). This varies the pace, angle and position of balls coming back to you and mimics the natural rhythm of hitting against a human.
For another, it means you’ll spend less time picking up balls in between drills. The more balls the robot is able to collect in its net, the more time you’ll have before the hopper is empty, a point at which you’ll need to collect all the balls on the court and reload the machine.
The Acemate S10 can track balls because it has a 4K camera on each side of its face and AI-powered tracking. (The Acemate is not a humanoid robot. It’s just a box on wheels, but the two cameras look like eyes, and the opening on the front looks like a mouth, giving the robot a friendly, if somewhat surprised-looking, face.)
The Acemate S10 sits on four Mecanum wheels that allow it to move in any direction — side to side, forward and back and diagonally. And the robot can really zip around the court. If you’re a high-level player who constantly crushes groundstrokes, then the speedy Acemate is probably not speedy enough to catch a lot of your shots. I’m rated as an intermediate 4.0 player who hits firm-but-not-punishing groundstrokes, and the robot was able to move itself in front of many of the shots that I kept inside the lines.
The Acemate is powered by a removable battery. The company estimates you’ll get about three hours of battery life, but I can’t confirm that figure because I always tired out before the Acemate did. For coaches or groups of players who might want to use the Acemate for longer periods, you can buy a second battery for $99.
The Acemate S10 not only tracks your shots to attempt to collect them in its net, but it also tracks where they land in the court. For each drill, it compiles a report of your missed and made shots. It shows you where your shots landed on the court and the percentage that landed in the target zone for a particular drill.
What I found more interesting was the average and maximum speed of the shots I was hitting, as well as my average net clearance. It could be helpful to see how much my accuracy decreases as I hit the ball harder and lower over the net, allowing me to find the sweet spot between power and consistency, which are always in delicate balance.
I controlled the robot from the Acemate app on my iPhone. With a 10-second countdown for each drill, I had time to stash my phone against the fence behind me before the first ball was hit toward me. (You can also bypass the countdown if you’re a coach starting a drill for a group of students.)
The app comes preloaded with dozens of different drills that target all types of shots from all areas on the court. You can practice hitting forehands crosscourt, backhands down the line and vice versa or alternate from side to side. There are also drills for volleys, overheads and even serves. I found baseline drills the most helpful, and not only because I like to play from the baseline as opposed to up at the net. The Acemate’s feeds were more consistent and accurate from the baseline, and then the robot had more time and a better chance to catch my shot with me positioned at the opposite baseline.
There were a few drills that didn’t quite work for me. There’s a category called Winners, where the robot hits a short ball that I was supposed to crush into the target area for a winner. The feeds during this drill were so short and soft that I was practically standing on top of the net when I hit the ball. Worse were the Overhead drills because the robot could not hit a lob high enough for me to hit an actual overhead. Instead, I was hitting easy volleys instead of being able to get under the ball and swinging out for an overhead smash.
The serve drills were similarly lackluster. A number of drills are intended for practicing a return of a serve, but the Acemate does a poor approximation of one. With a tennis serve, you strike the ball over your head, whereas the robot shoots a ball out from an opening that’s only a foot above the ground. The best serve-related feature is when you’re standing on the same baseline as the Acemate and use it to feed balls gently to you so you can practice your serve. But then again, it’s probably easier just to stand next to a hopper of balls instead of having the robot spit a ball toward you from a few feet away.
The first thing that will annoy you about the AceMate S10 is driving it to the court. There’s no way to lock the wheels, so the robot will roll around in the back of your car. And the thing is heavy at nearly 40 pounds, so it slammed around in the back of my SUV. I eventually devised a way to wedge it somewhat in place using my tennis bag, but even then, I learned to take turns slowly and gently.
It’s also a bit heavy to lug from the car and onto the court, but at least there are handles on the side that helped me carry it into place. Still, my troubles weren’t over once I had it positioned on the court. On more than one occasion, I had to wait for a firmware update to complete before the robot started up. After I’ve closed my laptop for the day, left work and got to the tennis court, the last thing I want to do is wait a few minutes for a software update to complete.
The robot also proved to be overly sensitive to the sun and rain. It once refused to work when I took it to the court a day after it rained. The clay was slightly damp but more than firm and dry enough for play, but the Acemate gave me a vague error message and refused to feed any balls after the first few drills. The company told me that it was likely because the balls I had picked up from the court and fed back into the machine were slightly damp, which could have caused confusion with the robot’s sensors.
Another time, I went to the court after work and placed the Acemate on the side facing the sun so that I could play with the sun at my back. It turned out that the Acemate liked the low, late-day sun in its eyes even less than I did and produced another vague error message. It wasn’t until we changed positions (and I grabbed my sunglasses) that we were able to begin.
With its variety of drills, the Acemate S10 is far from a one-trick pony, but it is a bit of a one-speed ride. There’s a Shot Tempo setting for each drill, which lets you select the speed (slow, medium, fast or very fast) at which the robot shoots balls at you. I detected little to no difference in the speeds, and even the very fast setting isn’t very fast.
There’s a newer and more powerful AceMate S10 Pro that can fire balls at up to 75 miles per hour, an increase from the 60 mph that the regular S10 robot can hit. The Acemate S10 only tracks the speed of my shots, but if it also tracked the speed of its feeds, I doubt it would come very close to 60 mph. I felt I was getting fed at a max of maybe 50 mph. I would like to be able to practice against a greater pace — something I struggle with when playing against big hitters. On the flip side, I also need practice at generating my own pace on softer, slower shots — something that’s a challenge when facing off against a pusher who returns each shot with little to no pace.
The Acemate S10 has a full price of $2,499, but is almost always discounted to $1,999. And until Oct. 20, it’s selling for $1,899. And with code FALLSALE50, you can knock another $50 off its price.
Even at its triple-discounted price of $1,849, the Acemate S10 certainly costs more than a curiosity or toy, and I wouldn’t recommend buying it if you’re simply curious about tennis and have never played. On the other hand, the Acemate S10 certainly costs less than paying for private or even group lessons over time, but the one thing you won’t get from the robot is a critique of your form.
All the data it collects won’t help you identify a flaw in your technique or harp on you to improve your footwork. My advice for true beginners is to pay for a few lessons before paying for the Acemate S10. It’s a wiser investment for beginner-to-intermediate players looking to practice consistently without relying on the busy schedules of family or friends to align with theirs to get out on the court. For this type of person, the robot can be a valuable tool for improving their tennis game.
Here’s the best user scenario for the Acemate S10 tennis robot: Someone who is no longer a beginner and wants to accelerate their progress into becoming a better intermediate player. You have taken lessons for a few months and know which skills you need to work on and refine. Or you’ve played tennis at some point in a past life and want to return to the sport. In either case, you have some foundational abilities that the robot itself cannot teach you. Where the Acemate S10 comes in is by providing a way to play consistently before you make tennis friends, so you can sharpen your game.
After doing enough drills on the opposite side of the net from the Acemate S10, you’ll have the confidence and skills to join a tennis group, club or league. And before long, you’ll end up on too many tennis-related texts that your tennis schedule will become too busy to use the Acemate S10 with any great frequency. You need not worry about leaving the robot behind — it won’t be lonely or sad. It might have a cute face with some artificial intelligence behind it, but it’s only a machine and can’t feel emotions.
for informational purposes only. We do not claim ownership, accuracy, or liability for the content provided. All rights belong to the original publisher.