Over the last century, we have mined more and more raw materials, and manufactured products from those materials. Increased prices for mined raw materials and improved recycling technology have enabled some industries to rely more on recycled materials than ever before. A report by Bob Tita in the Wall Street Journal last week detailed this trend in the aluminum business. According to Tita:
Robotic wheelchairs may soon be able to move through crowds smoothly and safely. As part of CrowdBot, an EU-funded project, EPFL researchers are exploring the technical, ethical and safety issues related to this kind of technology. The aim of the project is to eventually help the disabled get around more easily.
Robots are featuring more and more in our daily lives. They can be incredibly useful (bionic limbs, robotic lawnmowers, or robots which deliver meals to people in quarantine), or merely entertaining (robotic dogs, dancing toys, and acrobatic drones). Imagination is perhaps the only limit to what robots will be able to do in the future.
Researchers from the RIKEN Guardian Robot Project and collaborators have used a combination of lightweight material engineering and artificial intelligence to create an exoskeleton robot that could help people with mobility impairments. An important element of the new device is technology that allows the skeleton to effectively guess the intentions of the user.
Robots have come a long way. For years, they have been supporting human activity—enabling exploration in dangerous and unreachable environments like out in space and deep in the oceans. A new generation of robots are being designed to stay closer to home—caring for aging adults and young children.
Engineers and scientists have developed proof of concept for a robot that can reach some of the smallest bronchial tubes in the lungs to take tissue samples or deliver cancer therapy.
Researchers at University of Washington have recently developed a new protocol to train robots and test their performance on tasks that involve object manipulation. This protocol, presented in a paper published in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, is based on the Rubik's Cube, the well-known 3D combination puzzle invented by the Hungarian sculpture and architect Ernő Rubik.
Researchers have developed a mind-reading system for decoding neural signals from the brain during arm movement. The method, described in the journal Applied Soft Computing, can be used by a person to control a robotic arm through a brain-machine interface (BMI).
It's been roughly 23 years since one of the first robotic animals trotted on the scene, defying classical notions of our cuddly four-legged friends. Since then, a barrage of the walking, dancing, and door-opening machines have commanded their presence, a sleek mixture of batteries, sensors, metal, and motors. Missing from the list of cardio activities was one both loved and loathed by humans (depending on whom you ask), and which proved slightly trickier for the bots: learning to run.
If a Tyrannosaurus Rex living 66 million years ago featured a similar leg structure as an ostrich running in the savanna today, then we can assume bird legs stood the test of time—a good example of evolutionary selection.
Robots mowing lawns is a form of robotic assistance that society has accepted. But there are currently few concepts for robotic assistance in other tasks, specifically those that involve close proximity to humans, like housekeeping and care. The Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology IWU uses innovative switchable stiffnesses in robots to combine the required strength with the necessary safety. At the Hannover Messe Preview on March 16, 2022, and at the Hannover Messe from May 30 to June 2, 2022, the researchers will be presenting a robot arm that could facilitate the support of people in their direct surroundings.
Feeling and moving in a place without being there is the main goal of the new iCub robot advanced telexistence system, also called the iCub3 avatar system, developed by researchers at IIT-Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Italian Institute of Technology) in Genova, Italy. The new system was tested in an online demonstration involving a human operator based in IIT, Genova, and a new version of the humanoid robot, the iCub 3, visiting the Italian Pavilion at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition—La Biennale di Venezia; the two sites are 300 km apart and the communication relied on basic optical fiber connection. Researchers demonstrated that the system transports the operator locomotion, manipulation, voice and facial expressions to the robotic avatar, while receiving visual, auditory, haptic and touch feedback. This is the first test of a legged humanoid robot for remote tourism and conferring the experience to a human operator. The system is a prototype and may be further developed for other scenarios, including disaster response, healthcare and metaverse applications.
Skoltech researchers and their colleagues from ESPCI Paris, Chiba University, and Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology have used a 3D simulation to show that small fish swimming in a school can sense the position and tail beat of their neighbors as water pressure variation on the side of their bodies. This mechanism is thought to enable fish to maximize swimming efficiency in a group even in complete darkness, when no visual cues are available. Understanding group motion of fish is useful for predicting their migration and designing aquatic research robots that mimic fish behavior either for the energy-saving benefits of moving in a group or to blend in with the ocean creatures they are studying. The paper is published in Frontiers in Robotics and AI.
Over the past few decades, computer scientists have developed increasingly advanced techniques to train and operate robots. Collectively, these methods could facilitate the integration of robotic systems in an increasingly wide range of real-world settings.
In recent years, roboticists have developed mobile robots with a wide range of anatomies and capabilities. A class of robotic systems that has been found to be particularly promising for navigating unstructured and dynamic environments are legged robots (i.e., robots with two or more legs that often resemble animals).