RankedRAI Institute's AthenaZero throws, catches and bats a baseball at speed
A low-inertia bimanual robot matches human-arm mass to perform fast, contact-rich manipulation, the authors report in Science Robotics.
AthenaZero, a two-armed robot from the RAI Institute, was designed to have an effective end-point mass close to that of a human arm rather than a heavy industrial arm, the authors report. It uses quasi-direct-drive actuators and low gear ratios instead of the high-ratio gearboxes common in collaborative robots.
In tests described in the paper, AthenaZero threw a baseball faster than 21 m/s and a tennis ball faster than 30 m/s, caught throws up to 18.3 m/s, and hit a tennis ball with better than 82% contact accuracy in batting trials, the authors report.
Two AthenaZero units played catch with each other for up to eight successful volleys, and up to 12 with a human partner, according to the paper, published in Science Robotics on 16 September.
Sources
Written by the RankedRobot news desk (AI-assisted, human-reviewed) from the sources above; checked 2026-09-26. Claims are attributed to whoever makes them. Spotted an error? [email protected]