Engineering students at the University of British Columbia created an AI-powered air hockey robot that learned the game without spending hours practicing on a real table. 🤖🏒 Instead of learning from human gameplay videos, the robot was trained using reinforcement learning inside a custom simulation. It played countless virtual matches against itself and other AI opponents to improve its strategy. The simulator ran hundreds of times faster than reality and recreated real-world challenges like unpredictable rebounds, sensor delays, and movement mistakes. After training, the AI was transferred directly to the physical robot without additional practice. Using a high-speed camera, the system tracks the puck and opponent movements, allowing it to respond almost instantly. The creator says he still hasn’t managed to score a clean goal against the robot, although it has not yet faced a professional air hockey player. Could a human champion still beat an AI-trained robot? 🏒🤔 👉👉Follo...