Nature is one of the most valuable sources of inspiration for researchers developing new robots and computational techniques. Over the past few decades, technological advances have enabled the creation of increasingly sophisticated systems replicating naturally occurring processes and phenomena, such as animal behaviors and biological mechanisms.
To assist humans in completing manual chores or tasks, robots must efficiently grasp and manipulate objects in their surroundings. While in recent years robotics researchers have developed a growing number of techniques that allow robots to pick up and handle objects, most of these only proved to be effective when tackling very basic tasks, such as picking up an object or moving it from one place to another.
Some might say it's for the birds.
Rigid electromagnetic actuators have a variety of applications, but their bulky nature limits human-actuator integration or machine-human collaborations. In a new report on Science Advances, Guoyong Mao and a team of scientists in soft matter physics and soft materials at the Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria, introduced soft electromagnetic actuators (SEMAs) to replace solid metal coils with liquid-metal channels embedded in elastomeric shells. The scientists demonstrated the user-friendly, simple and stretchable construct with fast and durable programmability.
The Korea Institute of Machinery & Materials (KIMM) under the Ministry of Science and ICT developed a remote specimen collection robot that eliminates direct contact between medical personnel and patients.
Engineering researchers at North Carolina State University and Temple University have developed soft robots inspired by jellyfish that can outswim their real-life counterparts. More practically, the new jellyfish-bots highlight a technique that uses pre-stressed polymers to make soft robots more powerful.
In one of the more memorable scenes from the 2002 blockbuster film Minority Report, Tom Cruise is forced to hide from a swarm of spider-like robots scouring a towering apartment complex. While most viewers are likely transfixed by the small, agile bloodhound replacements, a computer engineer might marvel instead at their elegant control system.
Production lines and hygiene zones have to be spotlessly clean. And absolute cleanliness is critical wherever food is processed and medical instruments are handled. Now Fraunhofer researchers have come up with a mobile cleaning device that sanitizes equipment and production spaces to standards in a reproducible way. Equipped with self-learning and autonomous motility systems, this robot automatically detects the degree of fouling and selects the appropriate cleaning procedure.
With every droplet that we can't see, touch, or feel dispersed into the air, the threat of spreading COVID-19 persists. It's become increasingly critical to keep these heavy droplets from lingering—especially on surfaces, which are welcoming and generous hosts.
Over the past decade or so, researchers have been trying to develop techniques that could enable effective collaborative strategies among teams of robots. One of the tasks that teams of robots could complete better than individual robots is simultaneously searching for several targets or objects in their surrounding environment.
Imagine a dressing that releases antibiotics on demand and absorbs excessive wound exudate at the same time. Researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology hope to achieve just that, by developing a smart coating that actively releases and absorbs multiple fluids, triggered by a radio signal. This material is not only beneficial for the health care industry, it is also very promising in the field of robotics or even virtual reality.
A navigation algorithm developed at the University of Zurich enables drones to learn challenging acrobatic maneuvers. Autonomous quadcopters can be trained using simulations to increase their speed, agility and efficiency, which benefits conventional search and rescue operations.
Last year, nearly one third of Australian adults owned a smart speaker device allowing them to call on "Alexa" or "Siri." Now, with more time spent indoors due to COVID-19, smart voice assistants may be playing even bigger roles in people's lives.
Robots can learn how to find things faster by learning how different objects around the house are related, according to work from the University of Michigan. A new model provides robots with a visual search strategy that can teach them to look for a coffee pot nearby if they're already in sight of a refrigerator, in one of the paper's examples.
Training robots to guide injured workers through simulated tasks could make return-to-work evaluations and treatment programs more effective and accessible, according to researchers at the University of Alberta.