--- title: "Thanks to AI, MIT’s New Robot Could Beat You at Jenga" description: "Roboticists at MIT used machine learning to teach a robot how to play a game of Jenga through visual and sensory clues." date: "2019-01-30" modified: "2019-01-30" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/mit-robot-jenga" categories: - "Robotics" - "Robots and Machines" tags: - "machine learning" - "mit" - "robot" - "the digest" --- # Thanks to AI, MIT’s New Robot Could Beat You at Jenga ![]() *\Image: MIT\* ## Jenga! Teaching a robot how to play Jenga is a lot more difficult than it sounds. Rather than relying on visual information alone, players have to poke, tap, and feel individual wooden blocks to choose which one to remove from the tower. But thanks to machine learning algorithms, MIT researchers were able to teach a robot how to successfully play Jenga by only giving it a basic set of instructions — an impressive victory for tactile robotics. ## Monkey See, Monkey Touch The [research paper](), published by journal *Science Robotics* today, describes how the robot takes a thorough look at the tower to examine the state of each block. Then it figures out its next move for "successful extraction" of pieces by predicting a block's future state. It can either push or pull a piece, a single millimeter at a time. Force sensors help continually analyze the situation to figure out if something is wrong or if a tower collapse is imminent. The robot can learn from past mistakes, adjusting its behavior after the tower collapses by "building nuggets of experience," as senior author Alberto Rodriguez [told *Popular Science*](). In other words, it knows what a successful move "feels" like. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1j_amoldMs ## Jenga Master The robot plays similarly to how us humans play Jenga: we come up with a strategy, predict the outcome — avoiding the collapse of the tower in the process — and figure out which piece to remove through feel. It's a great and playful example of the power of machine learning. But the researchers' robot won't win any major Jenga competitions. It's "good enough so that it could play against a human," but won't "achieve superhuman performance," Rodriguez told *Popular Science*. **READ MORE:** [MIT is teaching a robot to beat you at Jenga]() \[*Popular Science*\] ***More on machine learning: [Hellishly Hard New Game Is Specifically Designed to Confound AI]()*** ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()