Our muscles are nature's perfect actuators—devices that turn energy into motion. For their size, muscle fibers are more powerful and precise than most synthetic actuators. They can even heal from damage and grow stronger with exercise.
With rapid developments in artificial intelligence and robot technology, social robots will increasingly be used in society. Robotics researcher Chinmaya Mishra looked at the importance of gaze direction and human emotions in our communication with robots and developed two systems to make robots' faces work in our favor. Mishra will receive his Ph.D. at Radboud University on 17 April.
Climbing robots could have many valuable real-world applications, ranging from the completion of maintenance tasks on roofs or other tall structures to the delivery of parcels or survival kits in locations that are difficult to access. To be successfully deployed in real-world settings, however, these robots should be able to effectively sense and map their surroundings, while also accurately predicting where they are located within mapped environments.
The effective operation of robots from a distance, also known as teleoperation, could allow humans to complete a vast range of manual tasks remotely, including risky and complex procedures. Yet teleoperation could also be used to compile datasets of human motions, which could help to train humanoid robots on new tasks.
Elon Musk revealed Friday that Tesla will pull back the curtain on a robotaxi this summer, news that comes as the adoption of self-driving vehicles hits speed bumps over safety concerns.
Robotic systems have so far been primarily deployed in warehouses, airports, malls, offices, and other indoor environments, where they assist humans with basic manual tasks or answer simple queries. In the future, however, they could also be deployed in unknown and unmapped environments, where obstacles can easily occlude their sensors, increasing the risk of collisions.
Apple engineers are working on making personal robots, a report said on Wednesday, just weeks after the iPhone-maker abandoned its efforts to develop an electric car.
The Palmer Glacier on Oregon's Mount Hood isn't the moon, but it's a good place to practice.
In natural ecosystems, the herd mentality plays a major role—from schools of fish, to beehives to ant colonies. This collective behavior allows the whole to exceed the sum of its parts and better respond to threats and challenges.
Biologist, materials scientist and bionics specialist Professor Stanislav N. Gorb and his team at Kiel University's Institute of Zoology are known for analyzing the spectacular abilities of animals and translating them into innovative technical applications. For example, they created robot grab arms based on the model of insects and a detachable adhesive film that works in a similar manner to the adhesive organs of insects, spiders and geckos.
What would you do if you walked up to a robot with a human-like head and it smiled at you first? You'd likely smile back and perhaps feel the two of you were genuinely interacting. But how does a robot know how to do this? Or a better question, how does it know to get you to smile back?
A new study has shown that people modify their behavior to accommodate autonomous delivery robots, and it is this invisible "human work" that allows robots to run smoothly on the streets and needs to be considered when designing their routes.
Bushfires can move at astonishing speeds. The land, amount of vegetation, and the weather all have a big impact on how a fire spreads. Staying one step ahead is no easy task, but our bushfire researchers are working on it.
From wiping up spills to serving up food, robots are being taught to carry out increasingly complicated household tasks. Many such home-bot trainees are learning through imitation; they are programmed to copy the motions that a human physically guides them through.
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, have already proved to be valuable tools for tackling a wide range of real-world problems, ranging from the monitoring of natural environments and agricultural plots to search and rescue missions and the filming of movie scenes from above. So far, most of these problems have been tackled using one drone at a time, rather than teams of multiple autonomous or semi-autonomous UAVs.