Eureka 436: The world’s first autonomous tennis assistant

0:14You're listening to Eureka on Monocle Radio, brought to you by the team behind the entrepreneurs, the show all about inspiring people, innovative companies, and fresh ideas in global business. I'm Laura Kramer. Haitham El-Atrabi is the co-founder and CEO of Tenibot, a company based in Auburn, Alabama, that builds autonomous robots for racket sports like pickleball and tennis, helping players retrieve balls more efficiently and practice their skills. Originally from Egypt, Haitham had always enjoyed playing tennis casually, But it wasn't until he moved to Auburn to pursue his PhD that he truly fell in love with the sport.

0:56When he wasn't immersed in his research, you could find him on the court. But he found himself spending more time picking up the balls than actually perfecting his swing. Frustrated, Haitham decided to work on a solution. That idea led to Tennybot. Today, the company offers two robots, the Rover, a smart ball collector, and the newly launched partner. the world's first AI-powered ball machine that moves autonomously around the court, simulating human-like play. So how does an idea like tennis robots go from a personal pain point to a match point of a high-tech startup? Here is Haitham with more on how the journey began.

1:43I am originally from Egypt. I started playing tennis at a little age. Just my folks wanted my sister to be in the next chefograph. Spoiler alert, didn't work out. I used to be her hitting partner. So I would hit with her before and after. Her lessons, and this is how my journey with tennis started. After that, I didn't play for quite some time. And then in Egypt, I was studying. I did my undergrad in 7th Union University. I got my master's. And then right after I finished my undergrad, as I was doing my master's, I fell in love with tennis all over again, started playing, taking lessons. And this is around the same time I was applying to go for my PhD program.

2:22And I ended up in Auburn, Alabama to go to Auburn University to study my PhD. And I ended up getting my PhD and an MBA from here. Once I came to Auburn, I started playing tennis and volunteering for events. Anytime when I wasn't working on my PhD program, I was out on the tennis court. And I always, always hated picking up the Nesbos. Whether it is taking a lesson and I have to pick up balls, practicing myself, or even hitting with a ball machine. So I wanted to buy something initially, but there was nothing out there close to what I was looking for. So I ended up actually having to tinker and build one myself.

2:57And then a professor of mine introduced me to my co-founder, Lincoln. He was basically finishing up his master's in robotics and control systems. We hit it off. We started working together and then making a lot of damage to the prototype. But every time we tinker around with the prototype, go to the court, people approach us saying, Oh, this is amazing. Where did you guys buy this from? We applied to go to a consumer iconic show in Vegas. CES is a different level of excitement because obviously there's more take forward. And then you have folks coming over to the booth and say, Oh my God, I picked up so many balls in my life.

3:29I wasted so much time. Can I buy this? No, this is all you want to have. I said, it's okay, I'll buy it. I said, no, no, I'm not haggling. Literally, this is the only prototype I have. I can't sell it to you. And then I started seeing this over and over, realized, okay, clearly, we are not just being lazy here. A lot of tennis players have the same problem and they all share their frustration and hate the part about picking up tennis balls.

3:55We spent years fine-tuning, testing, working on reliability, solving different problems. you're basically building an autonomous vehicle for a tennis court so you it's an outdoor it work with different fencing and edge conditions people have wood people have rock people have wire fence some people have no fences whatsoever just two three cores all into each other how to deal with all of this stuff how to detect a human how to get ultrasonic sensors to move next to the fence but at the same time agitate the balls right at it how to basically bring the balls to the customer or to the tennis player and stop once it's full how to communicate this everything through the app because obviously we don't want someone to tinker with a machine because it's literally autonomous machine you wanted them to be able to use their app and then how to minimize the usage of the app because you wanted the poor machine to be intuitive the rover so we wanted to pick up the balls and then come and stand next to the person when this is the right time what does this mean means when they're running out of balls or it's full or whatever amount of time they sit on their app so all a lot of this back and forth obviously took a lot of time but we're excited to incorporate the feedback from the users we shipped the first batch with like five units and 10 units and 15 units and 50 units and 150 units and now we ship in real time and every batch was like 10 times better than the previous one we are actually manufacturing our facility here in Auburn Alabama city of Auburn was super supportive built this great facility called the yard and we just pay basically for rent and we get parts from all over the world, US, China, England, assemble everything in our facility here in Auburn and then do our testing, our quality control and then ship it to the customers.

5:36And most of our sales are 70 % of our sales are US-based and the other 30 % are worldwide. Think of all the big tennis markets, Europe, Australia, Japan, China, all the other growing hot spots of tennis like south america and india and uae are all big growing markets for us right now yeah we launched the partner our latest product a couple of months ago this is uh like a a smart autonomous board machine think of it as 10 times better than anything out there right now it's a board machine that moves on the court creating most human-like shots this means if you're playing tennis, you get to forehand down the line, inside out, cross court, creating this high variability of shots that historically you wouldn't see on a board machine.

6:24And also see where you are using a lot of technologies similar to the rover. So it took us six years to develop the rover and it took us six months to develop the part because the motor, the sensor, the cameras, the drive systems, all of this was the same from the rover. So it was fairly quick turnaround time that allowed us to get this basically out on the market fairly quickly. That partner, like I said, is able to create shots that no other ball machine can do. And because it actually sees where you are on the court, it can either hit it to you if you want to practice as a shot, or it can make you run.

6:55Let's say you are out there, you want to get some cardio exercise, you're on the forehand, you'll lay in your backhand, and then play you back to the forehand, and then back to the backhand. You can see how you can basically get a great workout fairly quickly. Or, whenever you are moving on the forehand side, you'll get forehand shots, and then you move down the middle, you get down the middle or you move to the net you start getting volleys and the idea behind it is to get to maximize and improve your enjoyment during this workout practice sessions. Tennis is a sport we love. I grew up playing but we've seen a lot of excitement, a lot of demand, a lot of people reaching out to me asking if that would work for the battle and for pickleball and for the rover while the rover works for tennis only for now, the partner works for tennis Baddell and for pickleball as well.

7:40So cover all wide range of racket sports, allowing to have this kind of great experience, practice experience on the court and human-like experience for all three sports, not just for tennis.

8:00That was Haitham Elitrabi, the co-founder and CEO of TennyBot. You can learn more by heading to TennyBot.com. And that's it for this episode of Eureka. We'll be back next week and look out for the entrepreneurs available every Wednesday. Eureka was edited by Jack Dewars. Listen again and find out more at monocle.com. That's where you can join the club and subscribe to Monocle Magazine or follow us and catch up with the archive via your preferred podcast platform. To contact the team, email me. I'm on lrk at monocle.com. I'm Laura Kramer. Goodbye and thanks for listening to Eureka. Thank you.