An octopus can bend one part of an arm around an obstacle while another reaches into a small crevice to grab an object. Reproducing that local control in a soft robot requires multiple actuators—components that turn energy into movement—together with their mounting hardware and connections.
For a service robot moving through an office, recognizing "furniture" is useful. When the robot has to plan a route or interact with objects, it also needs finer detail, such as whether that furniture is a chair, table or bookcase, and whether an opening is a door or a window. These distinctions can affect how a machine moves, avoids obstacles and decides what it can safely interact with.
We are used to seeing images of humanoid robots clumsily walking, stumbling over objects and awkwardly freezing in place. Struggling with real-world movement is one of the biggest drawbacks of current robotics. But now a team of researchers has come up with a new system to make them move and react far more reliably, and they worked everything out on a bunch of soccer-playing robots.
A quick search of humanoid robot videos will deliver demonstrations of two-legged robots playing soccer, dancing, jumping several feet in the air, even competing in kickboxing matches. It is all dazzling, certainly. But roboticist Aaron Ames, the Booth-Kresa Leadership Chair and director of Caltech's Center for Autonomous Systems and Technologies (CAST) and a leader in the field of robotic safety, has deep concerns. What is crucially missing before humanoids can play a larger role in our lives and society, Ames says, is safety.
Swimming can take a lot of muscle. But as MIT engineers have found, even a single layer of muscle cells can power through water if designed right. In a paper published Sept. 28 in the journal Advanced Functional Materials, the team presents a design for a thin, muscle-powered swimming robot. The "skeleton" of the aquabot is made from a film of gel about the length and width of a stick of gum. The two halves of the gel form the bot's "fins." Each fin is covered with a layer of live muscle cells much thinner than a single strand of hair. The cells are genetically engineered to twitch in response to light.
A Venus flytrap closes its leaves to trap prey when it senses a stimulus. Taking inspiration from this plant, KAIST researchers have combined the roles of skin that senses approaching objects and muscle that grasps them in a single soft material. When an electrically charged object comes near, ions inside the material move and produce an electrical signal.
Researchers in the Bio-Inspired Robotics Laboratory at Cambridge are exploring how soil behaves as an intelligent system. By studying its structure, chemistry and biological network of microbes and fungi, they aim to inspire new technologies in bio-inspired computing, precision agriculture and environmental sensing.
Getting up from a chair is something most of us don't think about. The movement is almost second nature: Our legs and hips work together in a precise sequence. But performing this task can be difficult for older people, often because of declining strength and reduced coordination in the hip and leg muscles. If a robot-assisted suit is going to support part of that effort, it must respond intuitively and in sync with the body's movements.
How many times have you asked someone to hold open a door while carrying something, or fumbled with your front-door keys with your arms full of groceries? Wouldn't it be great if you could give yourself the extra hand you need?
A four-legged robot that can complete a marathon on a single battery charge has been demonstrated by a team from KAIST. The robot, which completed the Sangju Marathon in South Korea in 4 hours and 19 minutes alongside human runners, traveled three times as far per charge than existing robots and could pave the way for improved battery life in legged robots.
As our skies increasingly crowd with buzzing, hovering, flitting drones, spare a thought for the humble hopping robot. Hopping, a popular form of locomotion in the insect and amphibian worlds, is nearly two orders of magnitude more energy-efficient than flying. Unlike a mosquito that must constantly expend energy to stay aloft, a flea only works out when it jumps.
For many of us, the last—and only—time we've seen a walking hand was Thing in "The Addams Family" movies or TV series. Now there's another. Engineers from the Soft Robotics Lab at ETH Zurich have adapted an off-the-shelf detached robotic hand so it can crawl across different surfaces, balance and interact with its environment.
A simple pattern of black-and-white stripes could cause an autonomous vehicle or robot to misjudge how far away an obstacle is, potentially triggering an unexpected maneuver or even a collision, according to new University of Florida research.
Humanoid robots, robotic systems with a human-like body structure, could assist people in homes, offices, health care facilities, public spaces and various other environments. Before they can be reliably deployed in these settings, however, robots should be able to safely navigate cluttered and dynamic environments.
Cornell University physics researchers have made robots that can, for the first time, sense the temperature of their surroundings and react together to change it. "Little things can have a large impact," said Itai Cohen, a leader in developing microscopic robots and a corresponding author on the study.