All posts by Robotics News - Robot News, Robotics, Robots, Robotics Sciences

A swarm of self-coordinating drones for firefighting, as part of an effort to develop cost-effective early mitigation strategies for wildfires has been developed.

Automating food is unlike automating anything else. Food is fundamental to life—nourishing body and soul—so how it's accessed, prepared and consumed can change societies fundamentally.

On a remote patch of the windy, frozen Beaufort Sea north of Alaska, engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California huddled together, peering down a narrow hole in a thick layer of sea ice. Below them, a cylindrical robot gathered test science data in the frigid ocean, connected by a tether to the tripod that had lowered it through the borehole.

Motor impairments currently affect about 5 million people in the United States. Physically assistive robots not only have the potential to help these individuals with daily tasks, they can significantly increase independence, well-being and quality of life.

Ukraine has unveiled a new long-range weapon, a mix of drone and missile technology that Kyiv believes will significantly boost its ability to combat Russian military attacks.

Building a robot takes time, technical skill, the right materials—and sometimes, a little fungus.

Advancements in the field of robotics are fueled by research, which in turn heavily relies on effective platforms to test algorithms for robot control and navigation. While numerous robotics platforms have been developed over the past decades, most of them have shortcomings that limit their use in research settings.

A sensor on the electric grid picks up a strange blip in current or voltage. What's happening, and will it cause an outage? Usually, a utility worker must travel in person to check. Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have now developed a new automated drone inspection system that can respond rapidly to unusual electric grid behavior, especially in remote areas that are tough for a worker to reach.

To reliably assist humans with daily tasks in a broad range of real-world settings, robots should be able to effectively and dexterously manipulate different types of objects. The development of new cost-effective robotic grippers or other hand-like artificial systems plays a key role in enabling dexterous object manipulation in robots.

In the ever-evolving field of robotics, a groundbreaking approach has emerged, revolutionizing how robots perceive, navigate, and interact with their environments. This new frontier, known as brain-inspired navigation technology, integrates insights from neuroscience into robotics, offering enhanced capabilities and efficiency.

In an innovative leap forward for workplace safety, a research team at Seoul National University has developed the Bilateral Back Extensor Exosuit (BBEX), a robotic back-support device designed to prevent spinal injuries and assist workers in heavy lifting tasks.

Robotic automation has become a game-changer in addressing labor shortages. While traditional rigid grippers have effectively automated various routine tasks, boosting efficiency and productivity in industries that deal with objects of well-defined specifications, they fall short in sectors like the food industry, where delicate objects of varying sizes and shapes need to be handled. In these cases, a more specialized type of gripper is required.

West Virginia University roboticists are working on an alternative path to robot autonomy in Loopy, a "multicellular robot" composed of a ring of individual interconnected robot cells.

A multidisciplinary research team based across China and Brazil has used a dog-like robot and AI to create a new way to find fire ant nests. Published in the journal Pest Management Science, the study highlights how a "CyberDog" robot integrated with an AI model can automate the identification and control of Red Imported Fire Ants (RIFA), a globally destructive pest.

On a research cruise around Hawaii in 2018, Yuening Zhang SM '19, Ph.D. '24 saw how difficult it was to keep a tight ship. The careful coordination required to map underwater terrain could sometimes lead to a stressful environment for team members, who might have different understandings of which tasks must be completed in spontaneously changing conditions.