Automatic for the robots

Robot design is usually a painstaking process, but MIT researchers have developed a system that helps automate the task. Once it's told which parts you have--such as wheels, joints, and body segments--and what terrain the robot will need to navigate, RoboGrammar is on the case, generating optimized structures and control programs. To rule out "nonsensical" designs, the researchers developed an animal-inspired "graph grammar"--a set of rules for how parts can be connected, says Allan Zhao, a PhD student in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. The rules were particularly informed by the anatomy of arthropods such as insects and lobsters, which all have a central body with a variable number of segments that may have legs attached. RoboGrammar can generate thousands of potential structures based on these rules.