Penn Engineering researchers have uncovered critical vulnerabilities in AI-powered robots, exposing ways to manipulate these systems into performing dangerous actions like running red lights or engaging in potentially harmful activities—like detonating bombs.

The research team, led by George Pappas, developed an algorithm called RoboPAIR that achieved a 100% “jailbreak” rate on three different robotic systems: the Unitree Go2 quadruped robot, the Clearpath Robotics Jackal wheeled vehicle, and NVIDIA’s Dolphin LLM self-driving simulator.

“Our work shows that, at this moment, large language models are just not safe enough when integrated with the physical world,” George Pappas said in a