Jeremiah Kithinji had never touched a computer before he finished high school. A decade later, he is teaching robotics, and even took a team of rural Kenyans to the World Robotics Olympiad in Singapore.
Researchers have developed an AI control system that enables soft robotic arms to learn a wide repertoire of motions and tasks once, then adjust to new scenarios on the fly without needing retraining or sacrificing functionality. This breakthrough brings soft robotics closer to human-like adaptability for real-world applications, such as in assistive robotics, rehabilitation robots, and wearable or medical soft robots, by making them more intelligent, versatile, and safe. The research team includes Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology's (SMART) Mens, Manus & Machina (M3S) interdisciplinary research group, and National University of Singapore (NUS), alongside collaborators from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU Singapore).
Mechanical engineers at Duke University have demonstrated a proof-of-concept method for programming mechanical properties into solid Lego-like building blocks. By controlling the solidity of hundreds of individual cells in specific patterns, the approach could allow futuristic robotics to alter their mechanical properties and functionalities on the fly.
Friendly robots, the ones people love to love, are quirky: R2-D2, C-3PO, WALL-E, BB-8, Marvin, Roz and Baymax. They're emotional, prone to panic or bossy, empathetic and able to communicate like humans do—even when they communicate in only beeps and bloops. At Purdue University, Sooyeon Jeong, robot communication and behavior expert, is working to make robots as friendly and helpful as possible in nonfictional settings.
Consider the marvelous physics of the human knee. The largest hinge joint in the body, it has two rounded bones held together by ligaments that not only swing like a door, but also roll and glide over each other, allowing the knee to flex, extend, and balance.
Chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive substances (CBRNE substances for short) can pose a threat to the public and to emergency services. For example, in 2023, a cesium capsule measuring just a few millimeters in size that had fallen from a truck led to a massive search operation in Australia. The recent increasing number of hybrid attacks and various destabilization attempts have exacerbated the threat situation.
Over the next decades, robots are expected to make their way into a growing number of households, public spaces, and professional environments. Many of the most advanced and promising robots designed to date are so-called legged robots, which consist of a central body structure with limbs attached to it.
Robots are getting better at sniffing out smells thanks to improvements in electronic noses (e-noses). A comprehensive review of the state of robot olfaction, published in the journal npj Robotics, has surveyed recent advances in the technology. It highlights how these digital noses are becoming more sensitive and more adept at identifying the source of an odor. This is leading to improvements in a range of areas, from search and rescue missions to detecting hazardous gas leaks.
As the new robot called Sprout walks around a Manhattan office, nodding its rectangular head, lifting its windshield wiper-like "eyebrows" and offering to shake your hand with its grippers, it looks nothing like the sleek and intimidating humanoids built by companies like Tesla.
Researchers are continuing to make progress on developing a new synthetic material that behaves like biological muscle, an advancement that could provide a path to soft robotics, prosthetic devices and advanced human-machine interfaces. Their research, recently published in Advanced Functional Materials, demonstrates a hydrogel-based actuator system that combines movement, control and fuel delivery in a single integrated platform.
Last year, when The New York Times reported that Amazon's robotics team's ultimate goal was to automate 75% of the company's operations, replacing more than half a million human jobs in an attempt to pass cost savings onto customers, it was a stark reminder of robots' ever-expanding role in reshaping the American workplace.
Collaborative robots, or cobots, are required to maintain compliant interaction while delivering rapid response performance when subjected to sudden, strong forces, such as during impact riveting, resistance spot welding, or precision shaft-hole assembly. This makes low-damping, high-stiffness impedance control critical for the reliable execution of these tasks.
A research team from the Visual Perception and Cognition Laboratory and the Cognitive Neurotechnology Unit at Toyohashi University of Technology investigated how the movements of autonomous mobile robots influence human emotional responses during passing encounters in virtual reality (VR) environments.
Humanoid robots look impressive and have enormous potential to change our daily lives, but they still have a reputation for being clunky. They're also heavy and stiff, and if they fall, they can easily break and injure people around them.
Nature is, of course, the master engineer—been there, seen it, solved it. While we struggle to design buildings that don't overheat or feel like concrete cages, nature has been perfecting comfortable living structures for ages. Now scientists are borrowing from the natural world again; this time, to build a swarm of interconnected mini-robots that could lead to buildings with dynamic facades that respond to sunlight and the people inside.