Inspiration from the sea helps this tiny robot navigate the desert

A robot teaches itself to navigate the world

Machine learning met and fell in love with biology-inspired design in the creation of C-Turtle, a developmental robot created by ASU doctoral students and faculty with backgrounds in computer science, mechanical engineering and biology. Produced with just $70 of materials, the robot took about one hour of crawling to learn how to successfully navigate a desert landscape. Future applications of these types of robots could include actively monitoring conditions in challenging environments such as minefields or other planets.

“We don’t tell it what to do. If we use tricks from nature, it learns much faster.”

– Heni Ben Amor, assistant professor in the School of Computing, Informatics and Decision Systems Engineering

The C-Turtle, a robot created by ASU faculty and doctoral students, uses an algorithmic learning process to discover how to move about in diverse types of terrain.