New MIT 'RoboGrammar' System Automates Robot Design

A new MIT system allows robot creators to simulate different robotic forms to determine which one will work best for their desired outcome. The system, called RoboGrammar, simulates different robotic forms after developers key in the parts they want to use for their robot as well as the type of terrain their robot will need to navigate. "Robot design is still a very manual process," Allan Zhao, the paper's lead author and a PhD student in the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), explains in a press release. Zhao describes RoboGrammar as "a way to come up with new, more inventive robot designs that could potentially be more effective." The team at MIT says that the primary inspiration for RoboGrammar came from the animal kingdom rather than from other robot designs -- arthropods such as spiders and lobsters in particular.