To ensure the safe operation of a robot, it is crucial to know how the robot reacts under different conditions. But how do you know what disturbs a robot without actually damaging it? The machine learning method developed by scientists from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria) and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems uses observations made under safe conditions to make accurate predictions for all possible conditions determined by the same physical dynamics. The method is specially developed for real situations and offers simple, interpretable descriptions of the underlying physics. Traditionally, machine learning can only interpolate data - that is, make predictions about a situation that lies "between" other, known situations.