Now you all know that we are BIG fans of robots here at Future-ish. But we also get a little freaked out when things come a little too close to cylons in Battlestar Galactica or any other scifi in which robots get a little too advanced for our own good.
A new development is both very cool AND a little scary: robots that teach themselves. Yay but eek! Berkeley postdoc Igor Mordatch has created an algorithm that allows robots to perform taks, achieve goals, and teach themselves all along the way. Lucky for us, most of the fascinating work is being done mostly via simulated software robots at this stage.
Read more in Will Knight's article, A Master Algorithm Lets Robots Teach Themselves to Perform Complex Tasks on MIT's technologyreview.com.