Researchers Antoine Cully, Jeff Clune and Jean-Baptiste Mouret unveiled last year a robot that could teach itself to walk after having one of its legs cut off. The following hexapod robot is an improved version of that.
Being able to adapt is one of the mandatory conditions of evolution. However, when talking about robots, the word evolution might make no sense to some. This concept, which may seem abstract in this context, is indeed possible, as demonstrated by the three researchers. The hexapod robot that they built can adapt to injury, but I’m rather sure that its learning mechanism could be used for other tasks, as well.
As usual, people started arguing that once robots learn to recover from situations that until now seemed with no exit, the human race will meet its end. Others are simply impressed by the fact that the robot is capable of learning, and that it can adapt to new situations such as having a broken leg.
As part of the learning process, the robot acknowledges the injury and start calculating possible solutions to the problem. When one of the best solutions is found (which only takes a few seconds), it is implemented, and the hexapod robot starts walking as if the broken leg did not even exist.
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To make sure that a robot performs well in harsh environments, engineers have to first test them in urban areas, …
