A robot dog has learned to run faster with machine learning

Reinforcement learning has helped a four-legged bot move a bit like a real animal, without having to be taught how to make each step. The news: Roboticists want their creations to mimic animals because animals invariably move in the most energy-efficient way. But the eerily lifelike movement of robots like Boston Dynamics' Spotmini is usually coded by hand. Now researchers have combined simulation with a technique called reinforcement learning to teach a dog-like robot called "ANYmal" to run faster and recover from falls. Crucially, it did so without any manual intervention.