Why it matters: These machines point to a future where robots are less like fragile, pre-designed tools and more like resilient, evolving lifeforms.<\/p>\n
Northwestern University engineers have developed the first modular robots with athletic intelligence<\/a>. They can be combined and recombined in the wild, recover from injury and keep moving no matter what\u2019s thrown at them.<\/p>\n Called \u201clegged metamachines,\u201d the creations are made from autonomous, Lego-like modules that snap together into an endless number of configurations. Each module by itself is a complete robot with its own motor, battery and computer. Alone, a module can roll, turn and jump. But the real agility and indestructibility emerges when the modules combine.<\/p>\n The study was published in the\u00a0Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/a>.<\/p>\n To design the most effective combinations, the engineers used artificial intelligence (AI) to evolve novel body configurations. Instead of sticking with standard dog- or human-like designs, the AI churned out strange new \u201cspecies\u201d of machines that no human engineer would have conceived. When connected to other modules, the metamachines undulate like seals, bound like lizards or spring like kangaroos.<\/p>\n The robots also can flip themselves upright when turned over, hop over obstacles and perform acrobatics like spinning in air. Because a metamachine is essentially a robot made up of other robots, it can resist catastrophic damage. Broken parts don\u2019t become dead weight; they keep rolling, crawling and rejoin the team.<\/p>\n By combining physical modularity with AI-driven design, the researchers have opened the door to a new class of robots that don\u2019t just survive the real world \u2014 they adapt to it. These machines point toward a future where robots are less like fragile, pre-designed tools and more like resilient, evolving lifeforms.<\/p>\n \u201cThese are the first robots to set foot outdoors after evolving inside of a computer,\u201d said Northwestern\u2019s Sam Kriegman<\/a>, who led the study. \u201cThey are rapidly assembled and then quite literally hit the ground running. They can move freely in the wild and easily recover from major injuries that would be fatal to every other wild robot. If flipped upside down, they instinctively bring themselves upright and continue their journey. They can survive being chopped in half or cut up into many pieces. When separated, every module within the metamachine can become an individual agent.\u201d<\/p>\n An expert in biorobotics and AI, Kriegman is an assistant professor of computer science, mechanical engineering and chemical and biological engineering at Northwestern\u2019s McCormick School of Engineering<\/a>, where he is a member of the Center for Robotics and Biosystems<\/a> (CRB). The study\u2019s co-first authors are Chen Yu, David Matthews and Jingxian Wang, who are all Ph.D. students in the CRB.<\/p>\n Evolution accelerated by computers<\/p>\n While today\u2019s robots can be fast and agile, their body shapes are often fixed and rigid. Most robots cannot adapt to new tasks, environments or physical damage. If a robotic dog breaks a leg, for example, it\u2019s basically useless. To escape those limitations, Kriegman\u2019s team turned to AI \u2014 not to copy familiar designs but to evolve something entirely new.<\/p>\n Kriegman and his team started with an evolutionary algorithm that mimics natural selection. As a starting point, the team gave the algorithm the building blocks for the robot. These building blocks are half-meter-long modular legs, which look like a pair of sticks joined by a central sphere.<\/p>\n \u201cInside the sphere, the robot has everything it needs to survive: a \u2018nervous system,\u2019 a \u2018metabolism\u2019 and \u2018muscle,\u2019\u201d Kriegman said. \u201cBy that, I mean a circuit board, a battery and a motor. The modules are mechanically simple. They can only rotate around a single axis, but they are surprisingly athletic and smart.\u201d<\/p>\n Then, Kriegman and his team gave the algorithm a goal: Design a robot with efficient, versatile movement. By mixing and matching the modules in different combinations, the algorithm generated new body types. It then simulated each design, keeping the best performers and discarding the weak. It also iteratively \u201cbred\u201d new designs by combining or mutating them. Depending on the robot\u2019s body, modular legs became legs, spines or tails.<\/p>\n \u201cWe simulated the Darwinian process of mutation and selection within a virtual, physical environment,\u201d Kriegman said. \u201cThis is survival of the fittest \u2014 accelerated by computers and made real by athletic modular building blocks.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Why it matters: These machines point to a future where robots are less like fragile, pre-designed tools and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332644,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[61,60,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-332643","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}