Man behind Darpa's robotics challenge: robots will soon learn from each other

Gill Pratt is set to leave the wing of the US defense department that develops cutting-edge technologies but lets us in on what's next for the venerated agency

Gill Pratt invented legs. Well, sort of: the MIT-educated scientist invented electric series-elastic actuators, the technology that carried the bipedal "dinosaur" robots that wowed the scientific community in the early aughts.

Since 2010, he has worked for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), the wing of the US defense department devoted to funding and developing new technologies, from a self-steering bullet called Exacto to the packet-switching system, Arpanet, that became the internet. He is now set to leave the robotics challenge program.