One-handed OpenAI robot solves Rubik's Cube

OpenAI uploaded a video that shows off the latest advance in dexterous manipulation. The AI research organization created a one-handed, general purpose "Dactyl" robot that uses a pair of neural networks to solve the Rubik's Cube. The robot was not specifically built or trained to solve the Rubik's Cube. It was given the end goal of solving a scrambled cube and used reinforcement learning to complete its mission.

“Plenty of robots can solve Rubik’s cubes very fast. The important difference between what they did there and what we’re doing here is that those robots are very purpose-built,” says Peter Welinder, a research scientist and robotics lead at OpenAI. “Obviously there’s no way you can use the same robot or same approach to perform another task. The robotics team at OpenAI have very different ambitions. We’re trying to build a general purpose robot. Similar to how humans and how our human hands can do a lot of things, not just a specific task, we’re trying to build something that is much more general in its scope.”

Full details at The Verge.