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Robot created from scratch using AI takes its very first ‘awkward’ steps
Engineers used the prompt, “Design a robot that can walk on flat surfaces,” and used the design created by AI to 3D print the ‘walking’ robot.
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Northwestern University took to YouTube to share a video that shows a ‘walking’ robot that a group of engineers created using AI. They also added how it was created from scratch and took only seconds to build. The researchers conducted this interesting experiment while testing a newly built AI algorithm. Not only that, they claimed that the AI designed the robot just with a simple prompt.
“Northwestern engineers reveal the ‘instant-evolution’ algorithm, the first AI program capable of designing new robots that work in the real world,” the university added while sharing the video on YouTube.
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In a separate blog, they shared a quote from the head of the experiment team, Sam Kriegman. “We told the AI that we wanted a robot that could walk across land. Then we simply pressed a button and presto! It generated a blueprint for a robot in the blink of an eye that looks nothing like any animal that has ever walked the earth. I call this process ‘instant evolution’,” shared Kriegman.
What prompt did they use?
The researchers used a simple prompt to test this new AI. They asked the AI to “design a robot that can walk across a flat surface”. The “new algorithm compressed evolution to lightning speed” to come up with a successful design.
The video that the university shared opens to show an expert explaining what they are doing. As the clip progresses, the robot gets built using a 3D printer. Towards the end, it also takes a few ‘awkward steps’.
A study about the experiment was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It explains the process procedure, and purpose of the experiment in detail.
Take a look at the video that shows the making of the robot:
"When people look at this robot, they might see it as a useless gadget. I see the birth of a brand-new organism,” Kriegman shared. “Now anyone can watch evolution in action as AI generates better and better robot bodies in real-time,” he added.
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“Evolving robots previously required weeks of trial and error on a supercomputer, and of course, before any animals could run, swim or fly around our world, there were billions upon billions of years of trial and error. This is because evolution has no foresight. It cannot see into the future to know if a specific mutation will be beneficial or catastrophic. We found a way to remove this blindfold, thereby compressing billions of years of evolution into an instant,” he said.
