Demonstrates a robot that improves its own locomotion by identifying and physically 'self-destructing' redundant or inhibiting limbs during its lifetime.
arXiv · March 16, 2026 · 2603.12505
Why it matters
Challenges the assumption that robot morphology must be pre-designed and fixed before deployment. By using a single sequence model to manage both self-sculpting and locomotion, it opens a new path for adaptive hardware in unpredictable environments.
From the abstract
Every robot built to date was predesigned by an external process, prior to deployment. Here we show a robot that actively participates in its own design during its lifetime. Starting from a randomly assembled body, and using only proprioceptive feedback, the robot dynamically ``sculpts'' itself into a new design through kinematic self-destruction: identifying redundant links within its body that inhibit its locomotion, and then thrashing those links against the surface until they break at the jo