Most robots rely on complex control systems, AI-powered or otherwise, that govern their movement. These centralized electronic brains need time to react to changes in their environment and produce movements that are often awkwardly, well, robotic.
It doesn’t have to be that way. A team of Dutch scientists at the FOM Institute for Molecular and Atomic Physics (AMOLF) in Amsterdam built a new kind of robot that can run, go over obstacles, and even swim, all driven only by the flow of air. And it does all that with no brain at all.