We’ve come a long way since the birth of robotics in the early 1950s, and scientists have sought to evolve the discipline in the decades since. While there have been many successes, including much of the automation we see in factories today, there are many problems that researchers are trying to solve.
Likewise, we’ve seen many examples of robots developed by Boston Dynamics that can walk and navigate terrain, but it’s taken years to get to this point.
Now, an artificial intelligence system developed by a team at Northwestern University has designed a robot that walks in just 26 seconds, and the findings will soon be published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The artificial intelligence program can design new systems and structures from scratch and runs on a regular computer, not in a data center. This is different from many similar AI systems that need large amounts of power. The researchers then tested the artificial intelligence-supported algorithm they created by directing it to design a robot that could walk on a flat surface.
Project leader Sam Kriegman said “we discovered a very fast AI-driven design algorithm that bypasses the traffic jams of evolution without falling back on the biases of human designers. We told the AI we wanted a robot that could walk on land. Then we just pressed a button and voila. I call this process ‘instant evolution’.” “I say,” he said.
The computer started with a block about the size of a bar of soap, and the AI went through several iterations to evaluate the design, identify flaws, and physically carve the structure to perfect the design. After nine attempts, the robot he designed was able to walk at a speed equivalent to a human step, but was shrunken down to its size.
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