Google's Go-Playing Machine Opens the Door to Robots that Learn

Two robotic arms face two closed doors. Both reach forward and miss the door handles entirely. So they reach again, and this time, they hit the handles head-on, rattling the door frames. Finally, they grab the handles cleanly and pull the doors open, and after a few more hours of trial and error, they can repeat the trick every time. The two robots are somewhere inside Google, and though other machines have long been agile enough to pull a door handle, these are different: They learned to open those doors largely on their own.