Using Nintendo Wii remotes and a ball, members of the Brown Robotics Group are "teaching" robotic dogs to play soccer. The robots learn behavioral patterns that they will eventually be able to perform on their own, and data from the study could lead to the design of more intuitive and autonomous robots.

Since 2005, Assistant Professor of Computer Science Chad Jenkins has been working on the project, which tests the premise that robots can learn human behavior through direct interaction with humans better than by being explicitly programmed.