Four-Legged Robot Jumps Like a Deer in Switzerland

Specialists from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne have designed a four-legged robot that can jump like a deer and adapt its walking and running on rugged terrain, according to the institute. This scientific work expands knowledge about animals, and in the future, robots will be allowed to participate more extensively in biological research. Using a machine learning program, the four-legged robot learned how to "avoid falling on rough terrain by automatically shifting from walking to trotting and jumping," and it can switch from trotting to high bouncing jumps with a back arch, a characteristic of deer. Scientists plan to broaden their work with additional experiments that involve placing different types of robots "in a more complex and diverse environment."