This cannibal robot can grow and heal by eating other robots
Researchers from Columbia University in the United States have developed a robot, called the Truss Link, that can detect and merge with pieces of robots nearby to fill in missing parts.
"True autonomy means robots must not only think for themselves but also physically sustain themselves," Philippe Martin Wyder, lead author and researcher at Columbia Engineering and the University of Washington, wrote in a statement.
Made with magnetic sticks, the Truss Link can expand or transform from a flat shape to a 3D structure to adapt to the environment.
It can also add new bits from other robots or discard old parts that are not functional anymore to increase its performance.
In a video posted by the team, the robot merges with a piece nearby and uses it as a walking stick to increase its speed by more than 50 per cent.
'Gives legs to AI'
Researchers named the process in which the robot self-assembles bits of other robots 'robot metabolism'. It is described as a natural biological organism that can often absorb and integrate resources.
Robots like the Truss Link can 'provide a digital interface to the physical world, and give legs to AI,' according to a video produced by Columbia Engineering School.
Integrated with AI, they possess great potential, experts believe.
"Robot metabolism provides a digital interface to the physical world and allows AI to not only advance cognitively, but physically – creating an entirely new dimension of autonomy," said Wyder.
The Truss Link could, in future, be used to help develop groundbreaking technologies spanning from marine research to rescue services to extraterrestrial life.
"Ultimately, it opens up the potential for a world where AI can build physical structures or robots just as it, today, writes or rearranges the words in your email," Wyder said.
Programming robots has been a challenge for engineers; however, artificial intelligence is advancing developments in robotics.
'We now have the technology [AI] to make robots really programmable in a general-purpose way and make it so that normal people can programme them, not just specific robot programming engineers," Rev Lebaredian, vice president of Omniverse and simulation technology at Nvidia, told Euronews Next in May.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
France 24
8 hours ago
- France 24
OpenAI releases ChatGPT-5 as AI race accelerates
ChatGPT-5 is rolling out free to all users of the AI tool, which is used by nearly 700 million people weekly, OpenAI said in a briefing with journalists. Co-founder and chief executive Sam Altman touted this latest iteration as "clearly a model that is generally intelligent." "It is a significant step toward models that are really capable," he said. Altman cautioned that there is still work to be done to achieve the kind of artificial general intelligence (AGI) that thinks the way people do. "This is not a model that continuously learns as it is deployed from new things it finds, which is something that, to me, feels like it should be part of an AGI," Altman said. "But the level of capability here is a huge improvement." GPT-5 is particularly adept when it comes to AI acting as an "agent" independently tending to computer tasks, according to Michelle Pokrass of the development team. "GPT-3 felt to me like talking to a high school student -- ask a question, maybe you get a right answer, maybe you'll get something crazy," Altman said. "GPT-4 felt like you're talking to a college student; GPT five is the first time that it really feels like talking to a PhD-level expert in any topic." Vibe coding Altman said he expects the ability to create software programs on demand -- so-called "vibe-coding" -- to be a "defining part of the new ChatGPT-5 era." As an example, OpenAI executives demonstrated the bot being asked to create an app for learning the French language. With fierce competition around the world over the technology, Altman said ChatGPT-5 led the pack in coding, writing, health care and much more. Rivals including Google and Microsoft have been pumping billions of dollars into developing AI systems. Altman said there were "orders of magnitude more gains" to come on the path toward AGI. " have to invest in compute (power) at an eye watering rate to get that, but we intend to keep doing it." ChatGPT-5 was also trained to be trustworthy and stick to providing answers as helpful as possible without aiding a seemingly harmful mission, according to OpenAI safety research lead Alex Beutel. "We built evaluations to measure the prevalence of deception and trained the model to be honest," Beutel said. ChatGPT-5 is trained to generate "safe completions," sticking to high-level information that can't be used to cause harm, according to Beutel. The debut comes a day after OpenAI said it was allowing the US government to use a version of ChatGPT designed for businesses for a year for just $1. Federal workers in the executive branch will have access to ChatGPT Enterprise essentially free in a partnership with the US General Services Administration, according to the artificial intelligence sector star. The company this week also released two new AI models that can be downloaded for free and altered by users, to challenge similar offerings by US and Chinese competition. The release of gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b "open-weight language models" comes as the ChatGPT-maker is under pressure to share inner workings of its software in the spirit of its origin as a nonprofit.
Euronews
13 hours ago
- Euronews
Sweden's leader uses ChatGPT. Should politicians use AI chatbots?
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has stirred up public debate over politicians' use of artificial intelligence (AI) after telling local media he uses ChatGPT to brainstorm and seek a 'second opinion' on how to run the country. Kristersson told the Swedish newspaper Dagens Industri that he uses ChatGPT and the French service LeChat, and that his colleagues also use AI in their everyday work. 'I use it myself quite often, if for nothing else than for a second opinion. 'What have others done? And should we think the complete opposite?' Those types of questions,' he said. The comment sparked backlash, with critics arguing that voters had elected Kristersson, not ChatGPT, to lead Sweden. Technology experts in Sweden have since raised concerns about politicians using AI tools in such a way, citing the risk of making political decisions based on inaccurate information. Large language models' (LLMs) training data can be incomplete or biased, causing chatbots to give incorrect answers or so-called 'hallucinations'. 'Getting answers from LLMs is cheap, but reliability is the biggest bottleneck,' Yarin Gal, an associate professor of machine learning at the University of Oxford, previously told Euronews Next. Experts were also concerned about sensitive state information being used to train later models of ChatGPT, which is made by OpenAI. Its servers are based in the United States. Kristersson's press team brushed aside security concerns. 'Of course, it's not security-sensitive information that ends up there. It's used more as a sounding board,' Tom Samuelsson, Kristersson's press secretary, told the newspaper Aftonbladet. Should politicians use AI chatbots? This is not the first time a politician has been placed under fire due to their use of AI – or even the first time in Sweden. Last year, Olle Thorell, a Social Democrat in Sweden's parliament, used ChatGPT to write 180 written questions to the country's ministers. He faced criticism of overburdening ministers' staff, as they are required to answer within a set time frame. Earlier this year, United Kingdom tech secretary Peter Kyle's use of ChatGPT came under fire after the British magazine, New Scientist revealed he had asked the chatbot why AI adoption is so slow in the UK business community and which podcasts he should appear on to 'reach a wide audience that's appropriate for ministerial responsibilities'. Some politicians make no secret of their AI use. In a newspaper column, Scottish Member of Parliament Graham Leadbitter said he uses AI to write speeches because it helps him sift through dense reading and gives him 'a good basis to work from' – but emphasised that he still calls the shots. 'I choose the subject matter, I choose the evidence I want it to access, I ask for a specific type of document, and I check what's coming out accords with what I want to achieve,' Leadbitter wrote in The National. And in 2024, the European Commission rolled out its own generative AI tool, called GPT@EC, to help staff draft and summarise documents on an experimental basis. ChatGPT available to US public servants Meanwhile, OpenAI announced a partnership this week with the US government to grant the country's entire federal workforce access to ChatGPT Enterprise at the nominal cost of $1 for the next year. The announcement came shortly after the Trump administration launched its AI Action Plan, which aims to expand AI use across the federal government to boost efficiency and slash time spent on paperwork, among other initiatives. In a statement, OpenAI said the programme would involve 'strong guardrails, high transparency, and deep respect' for the 'public mission' of federal government workers. The company said it has seen the benefits of using AI in the public sector through its pilot programme in Pennsylvania, where public servants reportedly saved an average of about 95 minutes per day on routine tasks using ChatGPT. 'Whether managing complex budgets, analysing threats to national security, or handling day-to-day operations of public offices, all public servants deserve access to the best technology available,' OpenAI said.
Euronews
18 hours ago
- Euronews
Trump declares 100% computer chip tariff unless firms build in the US
President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he would impose a 100% tariff on computer chips, only sparing companies that commit to 'building' on US soil. The threat raises the prospect of higher prices for essential products dependent on the processors, and it will squeeze US tech firms, often reliant on Asia for chips. It also comes more than three months after Trump temporarily exempted most electronics from his most onerous tariffs. The president announced the tariff alongside Apple CEO Tim Cook on Wednesday, who said his firm would invest an additional $100 billion in domestic manufacturing. That comes on top of a previous commitment made in February, bringing the total to $600bn. The pledge follows similar announcements from companies such as TSMC and Nvidia, who have promised to spend more in the US. Big Tech has already made collective commitments to invest about $1.5 trillion in the country since Trump moved back into the White House in January. Now the question is whether the deal brokered between Cook and Trump will be enough to insulate the millions of iPhones made in China and India from the tariffs that the administration has already imposed and reduce the pressure on the company to raise prices on the new models expected to be unveiled next month. Wall Street seems to think so. After Apple's stock price gained 5% in Wednesday regular trading sessions, the shares rose by more than 2% in extended trading after Trump made his exemption announcement. The shares of AI chipmaker Nvidia, which has also recently made big commitments to the US, rose marginally in extended trading to add to the $1 trillion gain in market value the Silicon Valley company has made since the start of Trump's second administration. Demand for computer chips has been climbing worldwide, with sales increasing 19.6% in the year-ended in June, according to the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics organisation. Trump's tariff threats mark a significant break from existing plans to revive computer chip production in the US that were drawn up during the administration of President Joe Biden. Since taking over from Biden, Trump has been deploying tariffs to incentivise more domestic production. Essentially, the president is betting that the threat of dramatically higher chip costs will force most companies to open factories domestically, despite the risk that tariffs could squeeze corporate profits and push up consumer prices. By contrast, the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act that Biden signed into law in 2022 provided more than $5bn to support new computer chip plants, fund research, and train workers for the industry. The mix of funding support, tax credits and other financial incentives were meant to draw in private investment, a strategy that Trump has vocally opposed.
