A novel way to optimise robots
It harks back to a 19th-century idea about evolution
IT MIGHT SOUND obvious that if you want to improve a robot’s software, you should improve its software. Agrim Gupta of Stanford University, however, begs to differ. He thinks you can also improve a robot’s software by improving its hardware—that is, by letting the hardware adapt itself to the software’s capabilities.
This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Balls, sticks and the Baldwin effect”
From the November 6th 2021 edition
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