DyRET is a four-legged research robot that adapts its leg length to terrain. It does not invent a way to walk from scratch: it senses conditions, updates a model of how different body shapes perform, and selects a morphology associated with more energy-efficient movement. Researchers tested the system on physical terrain outdoors, but “all-terrain” does not mean it has been shown to handle every surface or operate without limits.
How does DyRET “teach” itself to walk?
DyRET, short for Dynamic Robot for Embodied Testing, is a research quadruped built to investigate whether a robot can change its body to suit its surroundings. In the 2021 peer-reviewed study, Nygaard and co-authors describe a system that senses terrain and uses an updated performance model to choose among leg morphologies associated with energy-efficient performance. The robot continued updating that model during tests on realistic outdoor terrain. Read the study in Nature Machine Intelligence.
“Teaches itself” is a shorthand for this feedback process, not evidence of human-like understanding or unrestricted self-learning. DyRET’s adaptation is grounded in sensed terrain and a model relating morphology to performance; the work does not show the robot independently inventing an entirely new walking system.
Can a robot change the shape of its legs?
DyRET’s distinctive adaptation is changing leg length. That makes its body shape—its morphology—part of the problem the robot can adapt, alongside its gait or control. A conventional fixed-morphology robot cannot make that same body adjustment while moving between conditions.
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The idea was demonstrated on a physical robot, not only in simulation. An earlier 2018 paper, “Self-Modifying Morphology Experiments with DyRET,” described leg-length changes and comparisons of control and morphology combinations in laboratory tests, with preliminary outdoor experiments. The later 2021 study reported the terrain-sensing adaptation system and outdoor testing. See the 2018 paper on arXiv.
What did the outdoor tests establish?
The 2021 study reports improved performance compared with a non-adaptive approach, and says the robot kept updating its model during tests on realistic outdoor terrain. The abstract does not give a single numerical effect size, so a specific percentage improvement cannot be stated on that basis.
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These results support adaptation in the environments the researchers tested. They do not establish reliable operation on every kind of ground, unsupervised deployment in arbitrary settings, or commercial readiness. “All-terrain” is a headline description, not a guarantee that the robot can walk anywhere.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Is DyRET a robot you can buy?
The cited work presents DyRET as a research platform. It does not identify a retail robot or a consumer product offering, so the research should be read as a robotics demonstration rather than a product announcement.
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