Humans can adapt as they walk over rocks, mud, sand, slippery ice, and uneven surfaces. They adjust to carrying a heavy backpack or limp along with an injured ankle. Legged robots cannot adjust so quickly. Most legged robots must be hand-coded for their environments. A crack in a sidewalk or a patch of oil can stop a robot in its tracks or cause it to come tumbling down.
Rapid Motor Adaptation (RMA) seeks to change that. The artificial intelligence was jointly developed by Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science and the University of California, Berkeley AI Research.
It enables legged robots to adapt intelligently in real time to challenging, unfamiliar new terrain and circumstances. It’s the first entirely learning-based system that does not rely on any hand-coded motions. and allows legged robots to adapt to their environment by exploring and interacting with the world.
Editorial note: This is a good step into the world of ‘smart objects’.