A Robot That Can't Be Stopped, Even When It Breaks

There's that little hop in its gait, the way it looks tentative as it springs forward from its haunches, the not-exactly-straight trajectory of its path. Except this isn't an injured animal. And even with two broken legs, this hexapod can figure out how to keep going. Which means that what looks like a slightly sad (if persistent) hunk of metal making its way across a hard floor represents something much bigger, actually. New research published on Wednesday in Nature finds that machines can change their behavior to adapt to being broken--they can learn and iterate based on self-reflection.