A Robot That Does Bike Tricks

What we have here is an electric bicycle driven by artificial intelligence. In other words, it's a robot. Developed by the Robotics and AI Institute, it's called the Ultra Mobile Vehicle, or UMV. It's a marvel of balance, and it can do tricks! So it's high in entertainment value, but wouldn't it be more fun to actually ride the bike yourself? Oh well, that requires some effort, so we may as well have a robot do it for us. Besides the tricks, there's a sequence at the end that shows how this robot avoids obstacles like a dog and the ball he is carrying, but it comes across as showing us how the robot doesn't like to play with dogs.  

What RAI built this for, besides to impress us with a viral video, is to demonstrate how the UMV learns by feedback. Children learn to balance on a bicycle by feeling what it's like to get it right, and also experiencing what it feels like to lose their balance. On the YouTube page, this learning technique is called reinforcement, which is a psychological term for rewarding desired behavior. You have to wonder what kind of reward works with an AI algorithm. Still, cool robot. -via Born in Space