MIT's Robotic Cheetah Taught Itself How to Run and Set a New Speed Record in the Process

To make their Mini Cheetah better equipped to skillfully scramble across varying terrains, robotics researchers at MIT's CSAIL used AI-powered simulations to quickly teach the bot to adapt its walking style as needed. That included learning how to run, which resulted in a new gait that allows the robot to move faster than it ever has before. As much as robot designers strive to engineer and program a robot to handle any situation it might experience in the real world, it's an impossible task. The world is endlessly chaotic. And when simply walking down a sidewalk, a robot could face a myriad of obstacles from smooth pavement to slippery patches of ice to areas covered in loose gravel to all of the above one after the other.