In 1969, artificial-intelligence pioneer and Nobel laureate Herbert Simon proposed a new science, one that approached the study of artificial objects just as one would study natural objects.
Researchers at Swinburne have developed a collaborative robot system to automatically treat back, neck and head pain caused by soft tissue injury.
Are robot baristas the future of South Korea's vibrant coffee culture?
Billed as "one of the most exciting artists of our time", Ai-Da differs from generations of past masters in one inescapable way: she is a robot.
University of Plymouth spinout company Fieldwork Robotics has completed initial field trials of its robot raspberry harvesting system.
In a research project for the U.S. Army, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley developed an agile robot, called Salto that looks like a Star Wars Imperial walker in miniature and may be able to aid in scouting and search-and-rescue operations.
More and more processes are being automated and digitized. Self-driving delivery vehicles, such as forklifts, are finding their way into many areas—and companies are reporting potential time and cost savings. However, an interdisciplinary research team from the universities of Göttingen, Duisburg-Essen and Trier has observed that cooperation between humans and machines can work much better than just human or just robot teams alone. The results were published in the International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technologies.
The genius of evolution is rarely seen in action, so the invisible hand guiding the direction of biological systems is often taken for granted. However, by applying the principles of natural selection to research questions and designing robots to carry out these tasks, scientists are creating the world's first evolutionary machines.
Since the dawn of humankind, exploration of certain places, ranging from the depths of the oceans to the edges of the universe, has led to numerous discoveries. However, there are also several environments that need to be examined but can't be directly observed, like chemical or nuclear reactors, underground water or oil distribution pipes, space and inside of the body. The EU-funded Phoenix project has been addressing this challenge by developing a new line of technology that will offer the opportunity to get to unreachable places.
Researchers at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory flew a fleet of 30 miniature autonomous blimps in unison to test the swarming behavior of autonomous systems. The blimps responded to each other while in flight and responded to changing conditions.
Robots are usually inspired by humans and animals. But the next frontier is plantoids, plant robots that move and explore the environment with smart sensors. Researcher Barbara Mazzolai has been developing plantoid technology.
In the HBO show Westworld, robots designed to display emotion, feel pain, and die like humans populate a sprawling western-style theme park for wealthy guests who pay to act out their fantasies. As the show progresses, and the robots learn more about the world in which they live, they begin to realize that they are the playthings of the person who programmed them.
How many times in the past week do you think your life was affected by a robot?
Hopes that the tech industry was on the cusp of rolling personal robots into homes are dimming now that several once-promising consumer robotics companies have shut down.
When a robot "dies," does it make you sad? For lots of people, the answer is "yes"—and that tells us something important, and potentially worrisome, about our emotional responses to the social machines that are starting to move into our lives.