The team found that the brains of table tennis players react in different ways to human or machine opponents.
With a ball machine, players’ brains tended to struggle in anticipation of the next serve, but found it much easier when facing a human opponent and the obvious cues they give off prior to a serve.
The findings could have implications for sports training, the researchers said, suggesting that human opponents provide a realism that can’t be replaced with machine helpers.
“Robots are getting more ubiquitous. You have companies like Boston Dynamics that are building robots that can interact with humans and other companies that are building socially assistive robots that help the elderly,” said Daniel Ferris, a professor of biomedical engineering at UF.
“Humans interacting with robots is going to be different than when they interact with other humans. Our long-term goal is to try to understand how the brain reacts to these differences.”
...