New Robot Can Sense Damage, Compensate

AVIDJockey writes "Researchers at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., built a four-legged robot that can sense damage to its body and figure out how to adjust and keep going. They report the development in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The article states that the robot can, 'generate a conception of itself and then adapt to damage.' This reaffirms advice that states that when the robot uprising finally comes, you should always aim your rocket launcher at the head (or brain nexus)."

Is that a big deal ?

[himanshuarora]

Given that robot can be made to sense anything..it can sense the damage of it's own with the best possible mechanism. Try damaging the processor(s) of that robot and see what will it do ?

People, you are not getting it

[mapkinase]

After reading +3 comments, I realized that people are not getting it enough:

For those who have access to university libraries or work for academy, in short, have access to Science here is the movie [sciencemag.org]

This is scary, colleagues.

Does anybody realize, that in the beginning robot only knows that he can move the legs in various directions? Period. That is it, nothing more. The Thing is given the goal: "Must. Move. Forward". In the movie, The Thing, this tetrapod starfish, is laying on the surface, then it gets up and starts crawling. And this crawling itself strikes you with the horrific resemblance to the crawling of real animals, which, I repeat, was not coded. NOT CODED.

Each leg has two joints. I call them "shoulder" and "elbow". After one leg is amputated at the "elbow", The Thing is able to perform the same scary move as before.

Watch the movie, it is worth it, believe me.