Last week, scientists announced that they created a brainy, four-legged robot resembling a starfish that can sense damage to its body and, on its own, think up a way to recover.
It used this internal model of itself to figure out how to walk on its four legs and eight motorized joints. Researchers Hod Lipson and Victor Zykov of Cornell Universityand Josh Bongard of the University of Vermontmade a robot that observed its own motion using built-in sensors in its joints and then generated its own concept of itself, or at least its physical structure, in its internal computer.
"In the beginning, the robot starts off and does not know what it looks like. You look at it, and you see that it's a four-legged machine. But the robot itself doesn't know that. All it knows is that it could be a snake, it could be a tree, it could have six legs," Lipson said in an interview.
Lipson said the robot used various movements of its joints, first to generate hypotheses and then to formulate an accurate conception of itself.
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