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.
Over the past few decades, electronics engineers have developed increasingly flexible, versatile and highly performing devices for a wide range of real-world applications. Some of their efforts have been aimed at creating smart and sensing textiles, which could be used to fabricate stretchy robotic systems, medical devices and wearable technologies.
In recent years, roboticists worldwide have designed various robotic grippers that can pick up and manipulate different types of objects. The grippers that are most effective in tackling real-world manual tasks, particularly complex object manipulation tasks, are often those inspired by human hands.
Researchers have made groundbreaking advancements in the field of soft robotics by developing film-balloon (FiBa) soft robots. These innovative robots, designed by a team led by Dr. Terry Ching and corresponding author Professor Michinao Hashimoto, introduce a novel fabrication approach that enables lightweight, untethered operation with advanced biomimetic locomotion capabilities.
A tiny battery designed by MIT engineers could enable the deployment of cell-sized, autonomous robots for drug delivery within in the human body, as well as other applications such as locating leaks in gas pipelines.
A new algorithm may make robots safer by making them more aware of human inattentiveness. In computerized simulations of packaging and assembly lines where humans and robots work together, the algorithm developed to account for human carelessness improved safety by about a maximum of 80% and efficiency by about a maximum of 38% compared to existing methods.
A team of engineers from several institutions in South Korea has developed a type of wheel with spokes that can be adjusted in real time to conform the wheel's shape to uneven terrain. In their paper published in the journal Science Robotics, the group describes the principles behind their wheel design and how well it worked in two- and four-wheeled test models.
Large language models (LLMs), such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, are known to be highly effective in answering a wide range of user queries, generalizing well across many natural language processing (NLP) tasks. Recently, some studies have also been exploring the potential of these models for detecting and mitigating robotic system failures.
The smaller carbon footprint, or wheel print, of automatic delivery robots can encourage consumers to use them when ordering food, according to a Washington State University study.
As global warming intensifies, people increasingly suffer from extreme heat. For those working in a high-temperature environment indoors or outdoors, keeping thermally comfortable becomes particularly crucial.
New research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst shows that programming robots to create their own teams and voluntarily wait for their teammates results in faster task completion, with the potential to improve manufacturing, agriculture and warehouse automation. The study is published in 2024 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).
Humanoid robots have long been a staple of science fiction, but there is now real progress being made. A range of new models made by or backed by the likes of Boston Dynamics, Tesla and OpenAI are able to walk and move like humans, as well as perform feats of agility and dexterity.
It looks a bit like a small lawnmower, but instead of dual handles, a single black pole with a tablet-sized screen attached rises from the machine.
A team of engineers at Google's DeepMind Project has demonstrated a robot capable of playing amateur-level table tennis (ping-pong). The team has published a paper on the arXiv preprint server describing how they developed the robot, how well it performed at different ability levels and how human players responded to playing with the robot.
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, are now used to capture images and carry out a wide range of missions in outdoor environments. While there are now several UAV designs with different advantages and characteristics, most conventional aerial robots are underactuated, meaning that they have fewer independent actuators than their degrees of freedom (DoF).