Researchers train robot to imagine its future actions

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In the world of artificial intelligence, being able to predict the future is considered a vital ability, especially for unmanned technology such as autonomous vehicles.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley are developing a system which enables robots to imagine the future of their actions.

A robot named Vestri was programmed by Berkeley researchers to forecast the actions it should take to get the best result for a task. Just like children learning about their world through playing with toys, robots can learn through "autonomous interaction.”

Gif via UC Berkeley

By playing around with objects, Vestri can learn the shapes and feel of them. It watches its actions through its camera, imagining what it should do next to complete different instructions. After one week of training, Vestri was given a specific task – moving an object from one spot to another.

Based on what it has learned, Vestri can produce difference video scenes that indicate various possible results of its actions, and then pick the best one to actually do it.

“In the same way that we can imagine how our actions will move the objects in our environment, this method can enable a robot to visualize how different behaviors will affect the world around it,” said Sergey Levine, assistant professor in Berkeley’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, whose lab developed the technology.

“The capabilities of this robot are still limited, but its skills are learned entirely automatically and allow it to predict complex physical interactions with objects that it has never seen before by building on previously observed patterns of interaction.”

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