If you’ve seen a robot manipulation demo, you’ve almost certainly noticed that the robot tends to spend a lot of time looking like it’s not doing anything. It’s tempting to say that the robot is “thinking” when this happens, and that might even be mostly correct: Odds are that you’re waiting for some motion-planning algorithm to figure out how to get the robot’s arm and gripper to do what it’s supposed to do without running into anything. This motion-planning process is one of the most important skills a robot can have, and it’s also one of the most time consuming.

Researchers at Duke University, in Durham, N.C., have found a way to speed up motion planning by three orders of magnitude while using one-twentieth the power. Their solution is a custom processor that can perform the most time-consuming part of the job—checking for all potential collisions across the robot’s entire range of motion—with unprecedented efficiency.

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