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Robots on the run

After decades of clumsiness, robots are finally learning to walk, run and grasp with grace. Such progress spells the beginning of an age of physically adept artificial intelligence.
By
  1. Hod Lipson

    1. Hod Lipson is in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Data Science, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027, USA.

Young animals gallop across fields, climb trees and immediately find their feet with enviable grace after they fall1. And like our primate cousins, humans can deploy opposable thumbs and fine motor skills to complete tasks such as effortlessly peeling a clementine or feeling for the correct key in a dark hallway. Although walking and grasping are easy for many living things, robots have been notoriously poor at gaited locomotion and manual dexterity. Until now.

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Nature 568, 174-175 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-00999-w

References

  1. McNeill Alexander, R. Principles of Animal Locomotion (Princeton Univ. Press, 2003).

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