An artificial intelligence equipped robot named'Curly' beat one of the world's best curling teams by quickly adapting to changes in the ice, its developers claim. The sport of curling involves constantly changing and uncontrollable environmental conditions - providing the perfect'test bed' for an AI-driven robot. Curly, who delivers the stone but doesn't sweep, won three out of four official matches against the Korean Olympic silver-medal winning women's team. The robot was developed by researchers from Korea University, who said this development narrows the gap between computer simulators and the real world. It's hoped the deep learning techniques developed for Curly could be applied to other robots that need to work'in the real world' and adapt to changing conditions.

A robot equipped with artificial intelligence (AI) can excel at the Olympic sport of curling -- and even beat top-level human teams. Success requires precision and strategy, but the game is less complex than other real-world applications of robotics. That makes curling a useful test case for AI technologies, which often perform well in simulations but falter in real-world scenarios with changing conditions. Using a method called adaptive deep reinforcement learning, Seong-Whan Lee and his colleagues at Korea University in Seoul created an algorithm that learns through trial and error to adjust a robot's throws to account for changing conditions, such as the ice surface and the positions of stones. The team's robot, nicknamed Curly, needed a few test throws to calibrate itself to the curling rink where it was to compete.

Humans are good at figuring out the intricate physics of object-ice interactions that affect how giant stones slide across a frozen surface. Machines, however, can freeze up in the real world. Curly, a new curling-playing robot, has a better handle on those complexities, thanks to an artificially intelligent brain that can quickly assess and map the icy environment, the state of play and optimal strategies for winning, according to a paper published Wednesday in the journal Science Robotics by a team of roboticists at Korea University in Seoul. The white, turtle-shaped robot, recently beat out elite curling South Korean players in a series of four matches, losing only once, according to the study. Curly's triumph is the latest example of machines besting humans at their own games--but it marks an important step forward: Other big wins for the robots have been in digital environments, where the physics of the real world didn't get in the way.

A curling robot has beaten humans at their own game. Klaus-Robert Müller at the Berlin Institute of Technology in Germany and his colleagues have developed a robot powered by artificial intelligence, called Curly, that beat teams of expert human athletes in curling matches. Curling is a sport in which players slide heavy stones down an icy path towards a circular target. Players compete in two teams of four, with most players taking turns turn to "throw" a stone or to …