A planetary gearbox is a compact mechanical transmission used to reduce speed and increase torque in motor-driven systems. It consists of a central sun gear, multiple planet gears that rotate around it, and an outer ring gear, allowing load to be shared across several contact points. This configuration provides high torque capacity, good efficiency, and […]

No matter how sophisticated they are, robots can often be indecisive and struggle with multi-step chores in the real world. For example, if you tell a robot to tidy a messy room, it might understand the goal but not know where to grab each object. It could even end up inventing steps. To address these common mistakes, Microsoft and a group of academics have developed an AI benchmark system to improve the accuracy of robot planning. The details of their work are published in a paper on the arXiv preprint server.

Leiden researchers Professor Daniela Kraft and Mengshi Wei have created microscopic robots that move without sensors, software, or external control. Instead, their behavior emerges entirely from their shape and the way they interact with their environment. They are only a few tens of micrometers long—far smaller than the width of a human hair—yet these robots can swim, sense, navigate and adapt in ways that look surprisingly life-like. And all this without having a brain.