From answering questions from Cabinet ministers, academics and students on climate change, substance abuse and the law to children's inquiries about her "birth" and links to God and being described as a talkative feminist, Sophia, the world-famous robot won hearts at an innovation fair in Zimbabwe this week.
Taylor Higgins, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, has co-authored an article that challenges conventional thinking about human-robot interaction.
If someone advises you to "know your limits," they're likely suggesting you do things like exercise in moderation. To a robot, though, the motto represents learning constraints, or limitations of a specific task within the machine's environment, to do chores safely and correctly.
The field of robotics is highly interdisciplinary, encompassing disciplines such as mechanical and electrical engineering, materials science, computer science, neuroscience and biology. The robotics community in itself is a champion of academic diversity.
The robotics field is advancing rapidly, with a growing emphasis on improving machine autonomy and interaction. As robots are tasked with increasingly complex activities, their ability to operate effectively in dynamic and unpredictable environments becomes crucial.
On September 11, 2001, during the terrorist attacks in New York, the commander of one of the firefighting teams had an idea that he had to get his team out of the skyscraper they were in. He could not explain why he suddenly ordered everyone out.
A team of mechanical engineers at Nanyang Technological University, in Singapore, has developed a way to automate the process of merging live cockroaches and electronics to create cyborg cockroaches, greatly speeding up the process. In their study, available on the arXiv preprint server, the group taught a robot arm to connect electronics to living insects.
Europe's road network is its economic backbone. Mostly constructed after World War II, extensive maintenance is essential as it's nearing its end of life. Increasing traffic volumes and more frequent road works result in traffic jams, delayed goods transport and risks for road workers. All this puts huge pressure on governments and road authorities.
To help humans to complete everyday manual tasks, robots should be able to reliably manipulate everyday objects that vary in shape, texture and size. Many conventional approaches to enable robotic manipulation of various objects rely on extensive training and precise programming, also delineating the properties of objects that the robots will be manipulating.
Better, faster artificial intelligence is fueling a rise in human-like robots for customer service at places like hotels and airports, especially in areas outside the U.S. But many robots still fail to connect with people, instead creeping us out with fake smiles and jittery movements.
A team led by Prof. Dong Erbao from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), collaborating with Prof. Yu Xinge from the City University of Hong Kong, developed a novel tactile perception method based on flexible grating structural color. The work was published in National Science Review.
A team of roboticists at the Beijing Institute of Technology, working with a pair of colleagues from the Technical University of Munich, has created a new kind of rat robot—one that was designed to interact in social ways with real rats.
Like waves sweeping through tiny stadium crowds, microscopic machines engineered by Cornell researchers can autonomously synchronize their movements, opening new possibilities for the use of microrobots in drug delivery, chemical mixing and environmental remediation, among other applications.
A team has developed flexible fibers with self-healing, light-emitting and magnetic properties. The scalable hydrogel-clad ionotronic nickel-core electroluminescent (SHINE) fiber is bendable, emits highly visible light, and can automatically repair itself after being cut, regaining nearly 100% of its original brightness. In addition, the fiber can be powered wirelessly and manipulated physically using magnetic forces.
Quadruped robots integrating manipulators could potentially tackle tasks that entail manipulating objects while swiftly moving around in their surrounding environment. These include tasks such as collecting the trash around the house, collecting specific objects and bringing them to humans or depositing target items at specific locations.