A robot developed at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) has successfully broken the record for the fastest run ever recorded. The unique aspect about this android cheetah was that it wasn’t programmed to run at an incredible speed, it was tasked to figure out
how to run that fast through trial and error.
Usually, programming machines involve humans doing all the work. Humans typically install precise instructions on what to do and how to do it. According
to Gabriel Margolis and Ge Yang, the problem with this approach is that
it isn’t scalable. A huge chunk of time is needed to manually program a
robot to operate in many different environments.
The robot cheetah is a manifestation of experts attempting to create a robot that functions through a learn-by-experience model. Through the project, the
robot was able to hit a top speed of 3.9 meters per second, or roughly
8.7 mph, when sprinting. Check out MIT’s video on the project and its
results below.
image credit: MIT
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