Just about anyone with any interest in cycling has seen this viral video; the bike-riding robot, hops up on a table, does a wheelie and holds a track-stand. The Ultra Mobile Vehicle (UMV) by the RAI Institute is a groundbreaking robotic machine that doesn’t just move; it learns. This isn’t your typical off-road truck or another overhyped concept. The UMV is an AI-driven vehicle that drives, turns, jumps, performs tricks and even executes precise balance maneuvers, such as the track-stand. And heck, it’s got more pop in it’s bunnyhop than your average BMX rider. Is that a Specialized Hot Walk carbon BTW? Nothing but the best for the binary baby.
The RAI Institute
The RAI (Robotic and AI) Institute didn’t respond to interview requests (this video is going viral, maybe they should use AI to manage their inbox), but on the face of it, their mission is to create highly adaptable, go-anywhere machines. According to the video the UMV is learning to do all this through Reinforcement Learning (RL). As explained by Synopsis.com:
“Reinforcement Learning is the science of decision making. It is about learning the optimal behavior in an environment to obtain maximum reward. This optimal behavior is learned through interactions with the environment and observations of how it responds, similar to children exploring the world around them and learning the actions that help them achieve a goal.
In the absence of a supervisor, the learner must independently discover the sequence of actions that maximize the reward. This discovery process is akin to a trial-and-error search. The quality of actions is measured by not just the immediate reward they return, but also the delayed reward they might fetch. As it can learn the actions that result in eventual success in an unseen environment without the help of a supervisor, reinforcement learning is a very powerful algorithm.”
This advanced AI technique enables the UMV to learn from experience, adapting its performance in real time.
The future of AI-driven mobility
The RAI Institute is continuing to refine and test the UMV, but its potential is undeniable and–if you’ve watched too many sci-fi movies–kind of terrifying. Whether deployed for military missions, or revolutionizing transport, this vehicle is as impressive as it is creepy.
“We need to make robots smarter, more agile and dexterous, and generally easier to use — more like people. Once we do that, robots and other types of intelligent systems…
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