Galbot and Tsinghua's LATENT Wins IROS Award for Humanoid Tennis Forehand

A Galbot, Tsinghua University and collaborators paper won IROS 2026's Best Entertainment and Amusement Paper Award for LATENT, a humanoid tennis-return method trained on imperfect amateur motion-capture clips.

In simulation, the full forehand policy succeeded on 96.52 percent of returns, versus 71.85 percent for PULSE. On a real Unitree G1, the paper reports 90.90 percent forehand success across 20 consecutive rallies, with motion capture still used rather than the robot's own cameras.