Machine learning method for robots to see into the near future

For future robotics, knowing how a robot will respond under different conditions is necessary to strengthen safe operations. The complexity is with assessing understanding what might break a robot without actually carrying out the activity and damaging the machine. The answer lies in a a new machine learning method. The method, which comes from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria, can make use of observations gathered under safe conditions. The algorithm can then make accurate predictions across a range of possible conditions, based on the same physical dynamics, allowing a robot to predict which activities would be safe and which would be dangerous. This provides a resemblance of the cognition that human shave in sizing up risks before an action is taken.