Video of the week: MIT robot gets winning feeling for Jenga

News

This week’s video comes from MIT where a robot has successfully learned how to play Jenga, an advance with potential applications on assembly lines or at recycling centres.

Developed by MIT engineers and detailed in Science Robotics, the robot uses its soft-pronged gripper, force-sensing wrist cuff, and an external camera to see and feel the tower and its individual blocks.

For the uninitiated, Jenga comprises 54 rectangular blocks stacked in 18 layers of three blocks each, with the blocks in each layer oriented perpendicular to the blocks below. The aim is to extract a block and place it at the top of the tower – and build a new level - without toppling the entire structure.

As the robot pushes against a block, a computer takes in visual and tactile feedback from its camera and cuff and compares these measurements to moves that the robot previously made. It also considers the outcomes of those moves - specifically, whether a block, in a certain configuration and pushed with a certain amount of force, was successfully extracted or not. In real-time, the robot then "learns" whether to keep pushing or move to a new block, in order to keep the tower from falling.

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