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Flexible Muscle-Based Locomotion for Bipedal Creatures

Goatstream
Demos
YouTube
1 HN user recommended this demo1 month2017–2022 score 1
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN cites it as an earlier, smoother precedent whenever new learned-locomotion or simulated-walking work appears.

A 2013 research demo of simulated bipedal creatures whose natural gaits are found by optimizing muscle-based controllers, with no motion capture or keyframe animation. It shows physics-based walking and running emerging from musculoskeletal models.

“Which made me revisit this classic” (HN, 2021)

1 recommendations · 7 citations · Demos · intermediate

8 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@npilk Apr 2021 Recommends
on HN thread Discovering Diverse Athletic Jumping Strategies
Very interesting. I guess it shouldn't be too surprising that the Fosbury Flop seems to be the optimal high jump method, even if it wasn't developed until the 1960s. I didn't see the link to the video with animations at first! It's here in case anyone else missed it: [link] Which made me revisit this classic: [this video]
A classic of simulated creatures learning to move.

Citations, criticism and jokes

@anotheryou Jul 2017 Cites it
on HN thread Google's DeepMind AI just taught itself to walk
Clearly needs some energy constraint factored in to look less like monty python :) I also wonder if the gravity is realistic. A similar video from 2013: [this video] Looks much smoother, because of muscle and nerve simulations. At 0:55 you can see the generations learning how to walk.
Smoother 2013 muscle and nerve simulation of learning to walk.
@elihu Aug 2021 Cites it
on HN thread Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”
Read more
I would hope that they can use a framework that's general enough to adapt to other form factors. So, making a humanoid is a way of giving themselves a difficult enough initial problem that they're less likely to be fooled by early success: the humanoid robot will have to self-balance, walk, open doors, and do a lot of the complex things that humans do without thinking in order to be considered a minimum-viable product. In the long run if this pans out, I'd expect to see farming and weeding hexapods, equipment-hauling centaurs, wheeled platforms with arms for getting around office spaces, construction bots with long-fingered hands and asymmetrical multi-jointed appendages, and so on. If the AI has a general capacity for motor-skill learning, then you can just give it whatever body is most optimal for the task at hand. I'm reminded of this video on training an AI to walk through simulation: [this video]
Training an AI to walk through simulation.
@rzzzt Aug 2022 Cites it
on HN thread Java in the Browser
There is a paper on two-legged animals learning different methods of walking: [this video] (or [link] for the slightly better known "music video" version). Soda Constructor's wikipedia page also links to a 3D applet named "Springs World 3D", I was playing with that one back in the day.
Paper on two-legged animals learning different methods of walking.

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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