Anthropic Project Fetch Phase Two: Claude autonomously controls a robot quadruped

Category: AI
Status: developing
Sources: Anthropic research, discussion
Summary: Anthropic published Project Fetch Phase Two on 2026-06-18, testing whether newer Claude models can autonomously control a robotic quadruped on tasks that human teams performed in August 2025: connecting to robot sensors, writing control programs, detecting a beach ball, and attempting retrieval. The lab reports Claude Opus 4.7, operating without human assistance, averaged 9 minutes 35 seconds across the four tasks completed by all participants versus 181 minutes for the fastest human team using Claude, about 20 times faster. The model still struggled with precise closed-loop control, the actual fetching motion.
Why it matters: It is a lab self-evaluation, but it marks coding agents moving from assisting humans with physical-robot programming to performing the full loop autonomously.
Follow-up: Watch for independent reproduction, the closed-loop control gap, and any method or environment release.