Google's simulated robots learn some seriously strange behavior

Teaching a robot how to walk and jump is one thing, but how about a bot with a knack for dragging its backside across the floor or sliding forward on its nose. These rather unusual behaviors emerged during Google's testing of a new technique to allow simulated robots to independently learn useful skills, such as walking and jumping, which can be applied to a wide variety of tasks. "Conveniently, because skills are learned without a priori knowledge of the task, the learned skills can be used for many different tasks," the researchers note in the paper. SEE: IT leader's guide to the blockchain (Tech Pro Research) The researchers from the Google Brain team and UC Berkeley say their new approach to unsupervised learning can lead to novel and amusing behaviors, such as the simulated cheetah scooting forward on its nose, sliding forward on its backside or running backwards. "This observation motivates our claim that human designers simply do not know or cannot imagine some skills agents can acquire," the paper states.