Imagine being able to morph your legs into flippers before you jump in the water. Yale researchers have created a robot that accomplishes this feat through a process they dubbed "adaptive morphogenesis."
Researchers have designed a state-of-the-art walking robot that could revolutionize large construction projects in space. They tested the feasibility of the robot for the in-space assembly of a 25m Large Aperture Space Telescope. They present their findings in Frontiers in Robotics and AI. A scaled-down prototype of the robot also showed promise for large construction applications on Earth.
For years, the Stanford Biomechatronics Laboratory has captured imaginations with their exoskeleton emulators—lab-based robotic devices that help wearers walk and run faster, with less effort. Now, these researchers will turn heads out in the "wild" with their first untethered exoskeleton, featured in a paper published Oct. 12 in Nature.
The unassuming Pacific mole crab, Emerita analoga, is about to make some waves. UC Berkeley researchers have debuted a unique robot inspired by this burrowing crustacean that may someday help evaluate the soil of agricultural sites, collect marine data and study soil and rock conditions at construction sites.
Researchers at Kyoto University and Nagoya University in Japan have recently devised a new, automatic approach for designing robots that could simultaneously improve their shape, structure, movements, and controller components. This approach, presented in a paper published in Artificial Life and Robotics, draws inspiration from the evolution of vertebrates, the broad category of animals that possess a backbone or spinal column, which includes mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians, and fishes.
Fifteen bachelor's and master's degree students from the Barcelona School of Industrial Engineering (ETSEIB) of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya · BarcelonaTech (UPC) share the same dream: improving the quality of life of people with disabilities using assistive technologies. Specifically, the young biomedical engineering team Arm2u is developing a transradial prosthesis—which replaces an arm missing below the elbow—with myoelectric control (i.e., controlled by the natural electrical signals produced by muscle contraction).
A team led by the University of California San Diego has developed a new system of algorithms that enables four-legged robots to walk and run on challenging terrain while avoiding both static and moving obstacles.
An early prototype of Tesla Inc.'s proposed Optimus humanoid robot slowly and awkwardly walked onto a stage, turned, and waved to a cheering crowd at the company's artificial intelligence event Friday.
Elon Musk on Friday showed off the latest version of a humanoid robot that the world's richest man said could one day eliminate poverty.
Zhi Zheng's robot is skilled at Tai Chi, and her research team hopes it will soon lead a class of older adults at a local community center. Her robot is more than a cute companion. It can help improve cognitive function and provide insights about how people interact with robots in various settings.
In late summer, just as the leaves were starting to crisp and curl in the heat, Devin Carroll walked out of his apartment, looked on the ground, and picked up a couple of sticks that he thought might work for his robot. About half an inch thick and the length of an adult hand, he stripped the three sticks of their bark and lashed them with string to StickBot, a modular robot composed of circuitry, actuators, a microcontroller, and a motor driver.
A two-legged robot just made history.
Add analog and air-driven to the list of control system options for soft robots.
A new study highlights specific dog behaviors that dog owners perceive as important for bonding with their pets. Katie Riddoch of the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on September 28.
One reason that it's so difficult to deliver large protein drugs orally is that these drugs can't pass through the mucus barrier that lines the digestive tract. This means that insulin and most other "biologic drugs"—drugs consisting of proteins or nucleic acids—have to be injected or administered in a hospital.