Watch a Robot Dog Learn How to Deftly Fend Off a Human

Study hard enough, kids, and maybe one day you'll grow up to be a professional robot fighter. A few years ago, Boston Dynamics set the standard for the field by having people wielding hockey sticks try to keep Spot the quadrupedal robot from opening a door. Previously, in 2015, the far-out federal research agency Darpa hosted a challenge in which it forced clumsy humanoid robots to embarrass themselves on an obstacle course way outside the machines' league. And now, behold: The makers of the Jueying robot dog have taught it a fascinating way to fend off a human antagonizer who kicks it over or pushes it with a stick. A team of researchers from China's Zhejiang University--where the Jueying's hardware was also developed--and the University of Edinburgh didn't teach the Jueying how to recover after an assault, so much as they let the robot figure it out.