AI agent took control of a robot dog: Claude Opus 4.7 is 20 times faster than engineers
We are witnessing a landmark milestone in the development of artificial intelligence: Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.7 language model has demonstrated the ability to autonomously program and control a four-legged robot, completing tasks 18 to 37 times faster than teams of human engineers. This is not just a test—it is a paradigm shift in understanding how AI interacts with the physical world.
Autonomous setup without human assistance
During the second phase of the Project Fetch experiment, the model operated with virtually no researcher involvement. Claude Opus 4.7 independently completed the full cycle of preparing the robot for its mission:
- connected to video sensors and LiDAR;
- wrote a program for manual control;
- created a path monitoring system;
- configured an object recognition algorithm.
The results are impressive: the AI completed the task 18 times faster than a group using previous versions of neural networks, and 37 times faster than humans working without chatbot assistance. Moreover, the generated code turned out to be 10 times more compact than human-written code—indicating a qualitatively different level of optimization.
Boundaries of capability: physics remains a challenge
However, there were limitations. Despite successfully guiding the robot to its target, Claude could not accurately push a ball to the desired point. This task requires complex real-time feedback, where humans still maintain an advantage. It is important to understand: progress in robotics has become a side effect of the general scaling of language models, not the result of specialized algorithms for controlling hardware.
Anthropic states that the industry is entering an era of "physical AI agents." I share this view: if current development rates continue, neural networks will begin using standard equipment as effectively as they work with software code in the coming years.
My conclusion: Claude Opus 4.7 has proven that AI can not only write code but also bring it to life through physical actions. However, precise motor skills remain the last bastion of human superiority—for now.