ETH Zürich's robot dog solves a giant Rubik's Cube with its feet
ANYmal-D scanning the cube from several positions. From Figure 1 of the paper.
Source: Amiet, Sánchez-Blanco Repgen et al., CC BY 4.0, cropped
Researchers at ETH Zürich have taught a four-legged robot to solve an oversized Rubik's Cube using only its feet. In a preprint posted on 17 October, the team reports three autonomous solves with an ANYmal-D robot, each taking about 8 to 9 minutes and around 30 steps.
The cube has a 0.4 m edge and weighs 4.6 kg. ANYmal has no arms, so it turns the layers and repositions the cube with its feet.
The system works in three stages. Onboard RGB-D perception scans the cube and estimates its position and colours. A planner turns the solution into a sequence of robot skills. Whole-body skills learned through reinforcement learning then carry out the moves, using the robot's onboard depth sensing and proprioception.
The work is a preprint and has not been peer reviewed, and the hardware result rests on three runs. Videos and details are on the project page.
Sources
- Solving a Giant Rubik's Cube with a Quadruped Robot, Amiet, Sánchez-Blanco Repgen et al., arXiv
- Project page, with videos of the robot