Cameras and LiDAR are also present to help robots avoid collisions. This doesn't require dramatic changes to the bots themselves, at least. The test units are Ghost Robotics designs augmented with sensors to test the new algorithms.

The initial work has proven fruitful, but there's a lot of work left before you could see this in robots beyond the lab. Assistant professor and key researcher Kaveh Hamed also stressed that it wasn't just about making the algorithms more effective -- they also have to be genuinely "bio-inspired." As such, it could be a while before there's a pet robot that moves just as smoothly as the real thing.