It sure sounds strange, but it is the pure truth! Scientists have built a walking robot, which now helps them to better understand the way humans move. One day the walking robot could even lead them to improving treatments for spinal cord and other such major injuries.

However, till then the robot itself has got improved: it is now able to adapt to different terrain, while in the previous part of its life it used to walk forward only on flat surfaces.

RunBot’s German inventors have used an infrared eye for their 1-foot-tall robot, so that it can now detect an incline in its path and adjust its gait after only maxim five attempts to navigate up the slope. RunBot is like a human baby, as it simply falls over till it learns how to walk properly; this is why the mechanism’s way of learning has been called a trial-and-error learning.

The robot’s infrared eye represents its brain, as it is connected to the control circuits, which are in fact directing the robot to change its gait. The scientists’ research have showed that the way they have built RunBot is somehow similar to humans’ body, whose motor control system consists of a hierarchy of levels. Some of these levels consist of simple interactions between the muscles and the spinal cord and they work largely on their own; but some levels are higher than these one and involve the need of the brain to control the moves.

RunBot will help scientists to better understand how humans move, which can solve many yet unsolved medical problems: scientists would be able to build better prosthetics for the amputees, to help therapists work with their patients and so on.