Animal-inspired AI robot learns to navigate unfamiliar terrain

An artificial intelligence (AI) system that enables a four-legged robot to adapt its gait to varied, unfamiliar terrain, just like a real animal, has been developed by researchers at UCL and the University of Leeds.

For the study, published in Nature Machine Intelligence, the researchers took inspiration from the animal kingdom to teach the robot to navigate terrain that it had never seen before. This included agile four-legged animals such as dogs, cats and horses, which adapt their movements to save energy, maintain balance, or respond quickly to threats.

The pioneering technology teaches the robot how to change the way it moves autonomously, rather than having to be told when and how to alter its stride like the current generation of robots. This enables the robot to transition between trotting, running, bounding and other gaits.

In simple terms, the robot doesn’t just learn how to move. It learns how to decide which gait to use, when to switch, and how to adjust it in real time, even on terrain it has never encountered before.

This advance is seen as a major step towards using legged robots in hazardous settings where humans might be put at risk, such as nuclear decommissioning or search and rescue, where the inability to adapt to the unknown could cost lives.

Professor Chengxu Zhou, senior author of the study from UCL Computer Science, said: "This research was driven by a fundamental question: what if legged robots could move instinctively the way animals do? Instead of training robots for specific tasks, we wanted to give them the strategic intelligence animals use to adapt their gaits, using principles like balance, coordination and energy efficiency.

"By embedding those principles into an AI system, we’ve enabled robots to choose how to move based on real-time conditions, not pre-programmed rules. That means they can navigate unfamiliar environments safely and effectively, even those that they haven’t encountered before.

"Our long-term vision is to develop embodied AI systems - including humanoid robots - that move, adapt, and interact with the same fluidity and resilience as animals and humans."