Programming a robot to teach itself how to move

One of the most impressive developments in recent years has been the production of AI systems that can teach themselves to master the rules of a larger system. Notable successes have included experiments with chess and Starcraft. Given that self-teaching capability, it's tempting to think that computer-controlled systems should be able to teach themselves everything they need to know to operate. But it should be much easier with a simpler system, right? A group of researchers in Amsterdam attempted to take a very simple mobile robot and create a system that would learn to optimize its movement through a learn-by-doing process.