Flexible robot arms learn to predict their next move

edited by Lisa Lock , reviewed by Andrew Zinin

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Add to Preferred Sources Three ways to forecast where the arm goes next. The blue forecast stays steady but misses the swing, the orange one drifts off course, and the green one, which combines both ideas, stays closest to the real motion (gray). Credit: Peking University A robot arm that bends like an elephant's trunk can slip into tight spaces and handle fragile objects. Controlling it is harder because its smooth bending makes its next move hard to predict. Researchers have now developed a method that keeps computer predictions of the arm's motion on track, even when the arm moves faster than the model was trained for.