- Researchers have built a Lego-like robot with the help of AI that could one day allow us to have our own weird robot building kits
- It had no head or eyes, but it navigated fearlessly over rough terrain.
- Its ability to adapt to unexpected conditions could teach us something about animal evolution.
Its jerky movements are bizarre 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.
Researchers unveiled the AI robot this month in a study titled “Agile Legged Locomotion in Reconfigurable Modular Robots,” published in PNAS. The study notes that most robots today are either bipedal or quadrupedal (there are obviously also a considerable number of robots that operate on rolling bases).
Although these robots can walk, run, jump and tumble, the Northwestern team says 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 provide clues as to why spiders have 8 legs, centipedes have a hundred, and snakes have no legs at all, and how each has adapted to navigate their environment.
Evolved robots are born to run, refuse to die – YouTube 
Look on it
The researchers started with self-contained autonomous legs comprising a CPU, battery and motor. It is a remarkably simple system with a single movable joint.
They then integrated this design into their AI. According to the article, “adding modular legs as building blocks to an automatic design algorithm enables the discovery of new ‘species’ of agile-legged robots.”
Crucially, the algorithm figured out how these seemingly independent systems could work together, move, and recover. It was a daunting task given that there are, according to the paper, “hundreds of billions of possible ways to connect at least two and no more than five modules.”
When the legs are put together, researchers reported that some legs transformed into support parts, working with other limbs to help them walk. As you watch the robot move, you see the lattice reconfigure on the fly, assigning locomotion tasks to some segments and support to others.
The videos show a robot that looks more like game pieces and moves in jerky and unexpected ways. There’s no vision system, so the sensors depend on reading orientation and seem mostly interested in forward locomotion at all costs. They are not elegant.
When a few colleagues noticed the video on my laptop screen, they pointed at it and asked, “What is that?”
3D printed carbon fiber AI robots autonomously discover 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 a leg breaks. The robot recovers and finds a new way to move.
Seeing the AI robot in action, it doesn’t seem like an exaggeration 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. The researchers believe these legs could eventually be mass-produced and the “Lego-like” design could allow anyone to create their own agile robots. Who knows what people might build?
“The resulting designs could recapitulate some locomotor structures and behaviors found in animals,” the researchers write, “or could reveal entirely new solutions to ancient terrestrial problems.”
What would you build with a Lego style robot kit? Let us know in the comments below.
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