Worldwide, humans are living longer than ever before. According to data from the United Nations, approximately 13.5% of the world's people were at least 60 years old in 2020, and by some estimates, that figure could increase to nearly 22% by 2050.
Recent technological advances have enabled the development of increasingly sophisticated sensors, which can help to advance the sensing capabilities of robots, drones, autonomous vehicles, and other smart systems. Many of these sensors, however, rely on individual cameras, thus the accuracy of the measurements they collect is limited by the cameras' field of view (FOV).
If an ingredient is out of reach on a high pantry shelf, it wouldn't take you more than a few seconds to find a step stool, or maybe just a chair, to stand on to bring the ingredient within your reach. This simple solution is the outcome of a complex problem-solving approach researchers call creative tool use.
Unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, have been central to the war in Ukraine. Some analysts claim that drones have reshaped war, yielding not just tactical-level effects, but shaping operational and strategic outcomes as well.
Scientists have been trying to build snakelike, limbless robots for decades. These robots could come in handy in search-and-rescue situations, where they could navigate collapsed buildings to find and assist survivors.
Cotton is one of the most valuable crops grown in the U.S., with a harvest value of some US$7 billion yearly. It is cultivated across a crescent of 17 states stretching from Virginia to California and is used in virtually every type of clothing, as well as in medical supplies and home goods such as upholstery.
With a brief squeeze, you know whether an avocado, peach or tomato is ripe. This is what a soft robot hand also does, for example, during automated harvesting. However, up until now, such a gripper needed sensors in its 'fingers' to determine whether the fruit was ripe enough.
Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have furthered a new type of soft material that can change shape in response to light, a discovery that could advance "soft machines" for a variety of fields, from robotics to medicine.
With a brain the size of a pinhead, insects perform fantastic navigational feats. They avoid obstacles and move through small openings. How do they do this with their limited brain power? Understanding the inner workings of an insect's brain can help us in our search towards energy-efficient computing; physicist Elisabetta Chicca of the University of Groningen demonstrates with her most recent result: a robot that acts like an insect.
Researchers have proposed a new strategy for the shape assembly of robot swarms based on the idea of mean-shift exploration: When a robot is surrounded by neighboring robots and unoccupied locations, it actively gives up its current location by exploring the highest density of nearby unoccupied locations in the desired shape.
Soft robotics is the study of creating robots from soft materials, which has the advantage of flexibility and safety in human interactions. These robots are well-suited for applications ranging from medical devices to enhancing efficiency in various tasks. Additionally, using different forms of robotic movement may also serve us well in exploring the ocean or space, or doing certain jobs in those environments.
Imagine a coffee cup sitting on a table. Now, imagine a book partially obscuring the cup. As humans, we still know what the coffee cup is even though we can't see all of it. But a robot might be confused.
A study published in the Journal of Field Robotics assessed the world's first unmanned machine designed for autonomous forestry operations.
A small team of roboticists at Carnegie Mellon University has developed a training regimen that allows a robot to start out with limited abilities, such as carrying out a certain task like opening doors or drawers, and to improve as it teaches itself how to modify its techniques when faced with previously unseen challenges.
Semi-autonomous and autonomous robots are being introduced in a growing number of real-world environments, including industrial settings. Industrial robots could speed up the manufacturing of various products by assisting human workers with basic tasks and lightening their workload.