If you are a German robotics company looking to expand into China, how do you promote your organisation in this new market?

First, you sponsor a table tennis champion to represent your company (due to the huge interest in Ping Pong in China, this makes perfect sense). Then you create a great piece of content by pitting said champion against one of your own robots in an epic duel to see if man or machine can be crowned king of the table.

KUKA Robotics have done a great job with this video. While it is highly stylised and takes a lot of liberties in the editing process, it is enough to get your heart pumping and raises some great awareness of the brand.

The Duel: Timo Boll vs. KUKA Robot.

In reality, looking at some of the DIY projects being conducted in garages to create actual robot ping pong players, we may not be too far off having version of this scenario playing out in real life. Welcome to the future of robotics.