New computational algorithms make it possible to build neural networks with many input nodes and many layers, and distinguish "deep learning" of these networks from previous work on artificial neural nets.
Moreover, most prior works on neural kernels have focused on the ReLU activation, mainly due to its popularity but also due to the difficulty of computing such kernels for general activations.
Simulated humanoids are an appealing research domain due to their physical capabilities. Nonetheless, they are also challenging to control, as a policy must drive an unstable, discontinuous, and high-dimensional physical system.