Toyota has unveiled the seventh generation of its CUE basketball robot. The new CUE7 debuted at Toyota Arena Tokyo and immediately became a technological showcase for the company: the robot not only shoots the ball but also moves independently around the court, dribbles, and adjusts its actions in real-time.
The main difference of CUE7 is the rejection of rigidly programmed movements. Instead, Toyota uses reinforcement learning – a system of learning with reinforcement. The robot analyzes the result of a shot, evaluates the error, and changes the trajectory of the next movement without engineer intervention. Essentially, Toyota is teaching the machine to acquire physical skills almost the same way a human does.
For the automotive industry, this is much more important than basketball. Such algorithms can be used in manufacturing robots, driver assistance systems, and future mobile platforms that must adapt to unpredictable environments. Toyota explicitly calls CUE7 a testing ground for AI, sensors, and motion control systems.
The robot, standing 2.18 meters tall, weighs 74 kg and is approximately 40% lighter than its predecessor. Instead of four wheels, it now uses a two-wheeled platform, and a lidar, stereo cameras, and a set of sensors are responsible for orientation. In 2019, the previous version of CUE set a Guinness World Record by scoring 2020 free throws in a row, and CUE6 later made the longest shot among humanoid robots – 24.55 meters.
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