- Researchers built, with the help of AI, a Lego-like robot that could one day lead us to having our own strange robot building kits.
- It had no head or eyes, but it navigated fearlessly over uneven terrain.
- Their ability to self-adapt to unexpected conditions may teach us something about how animals evolved.
Its jerky movements are strange and it looks like the love child of a spider and a K’NEX set, but the Northwestern University robot is actually something special in the world of robotics: AI essentially developed the design and movement strategy.
The researchers unveiled the AI robot this month in a research study, “Agile Legged Locomotion in Reconfigurable Modular Robots,” published in PNAS. The study notes that the majority of current robots are bipedal or quadrupedal (obviously, there are also a considerable number of robots that operate on wheeled bases).
While these robots can walk, run, jump and spin, the Northwestern team maintains that they cannot be modified “in situ,” meaning that if the robots encounter an unexpected situation or even one that disables a limb, they cannot adapt.
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The goal here was to build a robot that could not only perform better in these environments, but could also help them understand how animals evolved. Perhaps this work could offer some clues about why spiders have eight legs, centipedes have a hundred, and snakes have none, and how each has adapted to navigate its environment.
Look
The researchers started with autonomous legs that include a central processing unit, battery and motor. It is a remarkably simple system that features a single movable joint.
They then incorporated that design into their AI. According to the article, “feeding modular legs as building blocks for an automatic layout algorithm enables the discovery of new ‘species’ of robots with agile legs.”
Basically, the algorithm figured out how these seemingly independent systems could work together, move, and recover. This was a big task considering that, according to the document, there are “hundreds of billions of possible ways to connect at least two and no more than five modules.”
When the legs are brought together, the researchers reported that some legs transformed into supporting pieces, working with other limbs to help them walk. When you watch the robot move, you see how the lattice reconfigures itself on the fly, assigning locomotion tasks to some segments and support tasks to others.
The videos show a robot that looks more like game pieces and moves jerkily and unexpectedly. There is no vision system, so the sensors depend on reading orientation and mostly seem interested in forward locomotion at all costs. Elegant they are not.
When a couple of coworkers saw the video on my laptop screen, they pointed and asked, “What is that thing?”
3D-printed carbon fiber AI robots autonomously figure out how to navigate rocky terrain, sand, and a few inches of water. At one point, a researcher hits one of the robots with a stick until it breaks its leg. The robot recovers and finds a new way to move.
Seeing the AI robot in action, it doesn’t seem like a stretch to call it a “new species” of robot.
It’s fun to watch the researcher push, throw, and torture these intrepid AI robots, but the potential is much more serious. Researchers believe these legs could eventually be mass produced and that the “Lego-like” design could lead to everyone being able to create their own agile robots. Who knows what people might build?
“The resulting designs could recapitulate some of the locomotor structures and behaviors found in animals,” the researchers write, “or they could reveal entirely new solutions to old terrestrial problems.”
What would you build with a Lego-style robot kit? Let us know in the comments below.
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