Science fiction films such as Blade Runner (1982), Lars and the Real Girl (2007) and Her (2013) explore the advent of human-machine relationships. And in recent years, reality has met fiction.
For a robot to be able to "learn" sign language, it is necessary to combine different areas of engineering such as artificial intelligence, neural networks and artificial vision, as well as underactuated robotic hands. "One of the main new developments of this research is that we united two major areas of Robotics: complex systems (such as robotic hands) and social interaction and communication," explains Juan Víctores, one of the researchers from the Robotics Lab in the Department of Systems Engineering and Automation of the UC3M.
Hulking robots common to assembly line manufacturing tend to be loners. They often cut, bend and weld metal inside cages and behind barriers meant to safely separate them from human workers.
Brain Corp., which recently nearly tripled its orders from Walmart for self-driving, floor-scrubbing robots, is now making its first foray into Europe by opening a satellite office in the Netherlands.
Many work processes would be almost unthinkable today without robots. But robots operating in manufacturing facilities have often posed risks to workers because they are not responsive enough to their surroundings. To make it easier for people and robots to work in close proximity in the future, Prof. Matthias Althoff of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has developed a new system: IMPROV.
Standing upright and walking alone are very simple but noble motions that separate humans from many other creatures. Wearable and prosthetic technologies have emerged to augment human function in locomotion and manipulation. However, advances in wearable robot technology have been especially momentous to Byoung-Wook Kim, a triplegic for 22 years following a devastating car accident.
Mechanical engineering students challenged themselves to make a robotic fish that not only swims like a real fish, but looks the part too, demonstrating the possibilities inherent to soft robotics.
Drones and crawling robots outfitted with special scanning technology could help wind blades stay in service longer, which may help lower the cost of wind energy at a time when blades are getting bigger, pricier and harder to transport, Sandia National Laboratories researchers say.
It's likely that before too long, robots will be in the home to care for older people and help them live independently. To do that, they'll need to learn how to do all the little jobs that we might be able to do without thinking. Many modern AI systems are trained to perform specific tasks by analysing thousands of annotated images of the action being performed. While these techniques are helping to solve increasingly complex problems, they still focus on very specific tasks and require lots of time and processing power to train.
Dr. Kee-hoon Kim's team at the Center for Intelligent & Interactive Robotics of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) developed a way of teaching "impedance-controlled robots" through human demonstrations using surface electromyograms (sEMG) of muscles, and succeeded in teaching a robot to trap a dropped ball like a soccer player. A surface electromyogram is an electric signal produced during muscle activation that can be picked up on the surface of the skin.
Amazon employees start their shifts passing through turnstiles and a sign reminding them what they can't bring with them as they report for work alongside robots.
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.