Fighting fires could be done remotely without the need to place firefighting crews directly in potentially dangerous situations by using collaborative teams of artificial intelligence-powered robots with extinguishing equipment on board, with an initial soft trial of the technology proving successful.
Standing on a tower overlooking the cliffs of the Cortina downhill course, there is someone who is just as involved in the biggest skiing races of the Winter Olympics as Mikaela Shiffrin and Breezy Johnson.
The compound eyes of the humble fruit fly are a marvel of nature. They are wide-angle and can process visual information several times faster than the human eye. Inspired by this biological masterpiece, researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed an insect-scale compound eye that can both see and smell, potentially improving how drones and robots navigate complex environments and avoid obstacles.
EPFL roboticists have shown that when a modular robot shares power, sensing, and communication resources among its individual units, it is significantly more resistant to failure than traditional robotic systems, where the breakdown of one element often means a loss of functionality.
Researchers at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) have developed a new methodology for a robot to learn how to move its arms autonomously by combining a type of observational learning with intercommunication between its limbs. This work represents a further step toward achieving more natural and easily teachable service robots capable of performing assistive tasks in domestic environments, such as setting and clearing the table, ironing, or tidying up the kitchen.
Whether chasing skiers as they fly down the mountain or tracking the luge as it tears around bends, new drone-mounted cameras are offering Winter Olympics viewers a wild ride.
What is it about a cheetah's build that enables it to run so fast? What gives the wolf its exceptional endurance? While these questions can be partly answered through animal experiments, many contributing factors can't be isolated from one another. Now, a new tool has arrived: a highly customizable, open-source robot design called The Robot of Theseus, or TROT, developed at the University of Michigan.
Penn Engineers have developed a system that lets robots see around corners using radio waves processed by AI, a capability that could improve the safety and performance of driverless cars as well as robots operating in cluttered indoor settings like warehouses and factories.
Soft robots made out of flexible, biocompatible materials are in high demand in industries from health care to manufacturing, but precisely designing and controlling such robots for specific purposes is a perennial challenge. What if you could 3D print a soft robot with predictable shape-morphing capabilities already built in? Harvard 3D printing experts have shown it's possible.
A system developed by researchers at the University of Waterloo lets people collaborate with groups of robots to create works of art inspired by music. The new technology features multiple wheeled robots about the size of soccer balls that trail colored light as they move within a fixed area on the floor in response to key features of music including tempo and chord progression. A camera records the coordinated light trails as they snake within that area, which serves as the canvas for the creation of a "painting," or visual representation of the emotional content of a particular piece of music.
Ever feel run off your feet? Spare a thought for sea stars, creatures whose movement involves the coordination of hundreds of tiny tube feet to navigate complex environments—despite the lack of a central "brain."
Loneliness has a critical impact on the mental health of citizens, particularly among the elderly. Robots capable of perceiving and responding to human emotions can serve as heart-warming companions to help lift the spirits. A research team at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has discovered that the combined power of music and empathetic speech in robots with artificial intelligence (AI) could foster a stronger bond between humans and machines. These findings underscore the importance of a multimodal approach in designing empathetic robots, offering significant implications for their application in health support, elder care, education and beyond.
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.