Trained for as much time as humans, an artificial intelligence shatters the record for completing a ball maze. She even taught herself to cheat by taking shortcuts.
Not everyone is looking for high-tech or trendy gift ideas. Sometimes an “old” toy, or at least one that doesn’t require you to charge it 2 hours before using it, is just as good. Some are great, timeless classics like the ball mazes. You know ? This is a tray dotted with holes on which you must get a ball from point A to point B. Two buttons are at your disposal to do move the board up and down and left right. A game that requires finesse, skill and learning by trial/error.
He was therefore an ideal candidate for train artificial intelligence in order to demonstrate its ability to evolve and adopt a fine motor skills. THE CyberRunner AI robot set about the task. Equipped with a camera and of two mechanical hands, he practiced as long as 3 humans gathered for the occasion: 6 hours. The algorithm used allows the AI to learn from its mistakes and constantly improve its subsequent attempts. In the end, who do you think is the fastest? CyberRunner, and by a long way.
An AI completes a ball maze faster than any human
In the video below, we can see the robot completing the maze by 14.48 seconds. That’s better than the record set by “an extremely gifted human player,” but not by much, about 6%. Nonetheless, the result is very impressive to see. CyberRunner could have done much better that said. The researchers realized that during its learning, the robot began to find shortcuts. By moving the board in a certain way, he manages to pass the ball over a hole and thus cuts a good part of the labyrinth.
The teams had to tell the AI not to “cheat”. So that everyone can help evolve CyberRunner, the project will soon become open source. This is not the first time that AI has entered the world of games. She’s already better than humans in Quake 3 and beating the drone racing world champions. We also remember Alphago’s overwhelming victory over Lee Sedol, at the time the 3rd world player in Go, the Chinese strategy game.
Source: CyberRunner