Pickleball Robot: From Bainbridge Island to ABB

A pickleball robot is a practice partner that will feed you third-shot drops for as long as you want them. This post follows the idea from a backyard game invented on Bainbridge Island in 1965, through the ball machines tennis players had used for decades, to the AI training machines sold for pickleball in 2026. It also covers the one case we found of an ABB arm playing a paddle sport against people, a Google DeepMind research robot, and looks at where ABB robots could plausibly fit as the sport keeps growing.

A doubles game of pickleball in The Villages, Florida, 2017. Photo: TheVillagesFL / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

How a backyard game on Bainbridge Island grew up

Pickleball started in the summer of 1965 at the Bainbridge Island, Washington, home of Joel Pritchard, who later served in Congress. Pritchard, Barney McCallum and Bill Bell are credited with making up the game and its rules. Nobody agrees on the name. Joan Pritchard said it came from the pickle boat in rowing, crewed from the leftovers of other boats, while another story credits the family dog, Pickles. The first games used a Wiffle ball and plywood paddles. The Wiffle ball was later swapped for the sturdier Cosom Fun Ball.

A shop sign on Bainbridge Island, Washington, calling the island the birthplace of pickleball in 1965. Photo: Another Believer / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

For years the sport grew slowly. The Southcenter Athletic Club in Tukwila, Washington, held what is credited as the first formal tournament in 1976. In 1984 the United States Amateur Pickleball Association, now USA Pickleball, was formed and published the first official rulebook. Washington made pickleball its official state sport in 2022. By then the boom had started: the Sports and Fitness Industry Association named it the fastest growing sport in the United States from 2021 through 2024, with an estimated 19.8 million American players in 2024.

A Wiffle bat and ball; the first pickleball games were played with a Wiffle ball. Photo: Rmrfstar / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.5)

Practice equipment came over from tennis. René Lacoste tested a ball-throwing machine at the Asnières tennis club near Paris in 1928, and Prince was founded in 1970 to sell tennis ball machines. Pickleball players first drilled with partners or with tennis machines, and makers later built versions that throw the lighter plastic ball with holes in it. Those machines fire from one spot at a set speed and spin. They are good for repetition, but they cannot see where the player is standing or how the last shot went, and pickleball points are often won with soft shots at the net.

The 1928 ball-throwing machine feeding balls to a player across the net at Asnières while onlookers watch. Photo: Agence Rol / Bibliothèque nationale de France via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

AI pickleball training machines arrive

In 2026 the machines started to get smarter. On 26 August 2026 Tennibot, which says it designs and assembles AI ball machines in the United States, opened orders for Partner Lite at an introductory price of $1,495. It runs the same app-guided custom drills as the company's Partner V2, which drives around the court by itself, but it stays in one place to keep the price down. There are versions for tennis, padel and pickleball, and it works with Tennibot's Rover, an autonomous robot that picks up loose balls.

Yellow pickleballs scattered across a court after a practice session, 2016. Photo: Stephen James Hall / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Pongbot, a company that started with table tennis robots, launched Aura on 1 June 2026 for tennis, pickleball and padel. Its wheel system adjusts to balls between 40 and 80 mm without attachments, and Pongbot says the drills draw on more than 100,000 coaching data points. Aura weighs 7 kg, holds 120 balls and runs about five hours on a swappable battery. An add-on called Spotter uses two cameras to track play and analyse performance. Our post on tennis training robots covers the tennis side of the same trend.

Taiwanese player Willy Chung hits a forehand with a pickleball paddle. Photo: EasonChou0621 / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

ABB sells no pickleball robot. One of its arms has, however, played table tennis against people. In a 2024 study, Google DeepMind mounted a six-axis ABB IRB 1100 on two Festo linear gantries, fitted it with a 3D-printed paddle and trained it in simulation. It won 13 of 29 games against human players, beating every beginner and 55 percent of amateurs, and lost every game against advanced players. A pickleball rig built on an IRB 1100 or the slightly larger IRB 1200 is a possibility, and its moves would be planned first in RobotStudio.

The new generation ABB IRB 1200, a compact six-axis arm from the same small-robot range as the IRB 1100. Photo: ABB

Where pickleball robots go from here

For homes and clubs, the next machines will probably combine feeding, camera tracking and ball pickup in one system. Pickleball suits that better than tennis does, because the court is small and many points are decided by short, soft shots near the non-volley zone, which a camera can follow more easily. Picture a machine that sees a player creeping into the kitchen and drops a dink at their feet. A fixed machine can't do that. Collecting balls is the dull part, and robots like those in our tennis ball collecting post already handle it.

An indoor pickleball court in the Plankinton Arcade in Milwaukee, 2022. Photo: Michael Barera / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The sport's growth also creates work off the court. Indoor clubs now open in former big-box stores, and makers turn out paddles, balls and nets in large numbers. ABB has not announced any pickleball projects, so what follows is speculation. A GoFa CRB 15000 cobot could plausibly sand or inspect paddle edges beside workers in a small factory. A Flexley Mover could carry ball carts and nets around a large indoor club after hours, on a route set up without fixed tracks.

ABB's Flexley Mover P604 moves loads around a site without fixed tracks. Photo: ABB

Plenty is still unsolved. A $1,495 machine is cheap next to a robot arm, yet it is a big outlay for a casual player, and an arm on gantries is far beyond any club budget. Pickleball is played at close range, so a robot that hits back must never send a hard ball at someone's face. DeepMind's robot struggled with fast balls because of system latency, and pickleball exchanges at the net are quick. And while a machine can repeat a drill all afternoon, deciding which drill a player needs is still the coach's job.

ABB's GoFa cobot is guided by hand and stops when it senses contact. Photo: ABB

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