Watch a Deep-Learning Bot Learn (and Fail) to Run

For most animals, walking is instinctual and they're on their legs just minutes out of the womb. For humans, and for robots, it's a trickier proposition that takes a little bit of learning. But with deep learning to help out, a software robot can brave all kinds of obstacles after just a little practice, and someday real-life robots might use the same tactics. The DeepLoco project--by Xue Bin Peng, Glen Berseth and Michiel van de Panne of University of British Columbia and KangKang Yin of National University of Singapore--is series of experiments in deep-learning locomotion presented Siggraph 2017, a conference for advanced computer animation. In its simplest terms, the DeepLoco project has two parts.