Computers can be taught to understand many things about the world, but when it comes to predicting what will happen when two objects collide, there’s just nothing like real-world experience.

That’s where Galileo comes in. Developed by MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL), the new computational model has proven to be just as accurate as humans are at predicting how real-world objects move and interact.

Ultimately, it could help robots predict events in disaster situations and help humans avoid harm.

Humans learn from their earliest days — often through bumps, bruises and painful experience — how physical objects interact. Computers, however, don’t have the benefit of that early training.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here