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People interacting with social robots disclosed more about themselves over time and reported feeling less lonely, according to a new study.

Inspired by a small and slow snail, scientists have developed a robot protype that may one day scoop up microplastics from the surfaces of oceans, seas and lakes.

When a natural disaster such as an earthquake occurs, every minute counts. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are often used to assist the search for survivors as they can provide an initial overview of difficult-to-reach areas and help to detect victims—provided they are visible.

Damp, cold conditions are the enemy of wind power. If a layer of ice forms on the rotor blades, this can result in rotational imbalance and, hence, increased wear. In such cases, the turbines often have to be shut down for several days, leading to massive losses for the operators due to the pause in electricity production.

In a step toward more autonomous soft robots and wearable technologies, EPFL researchers have created a device that uses color to simultaneously sense multiple mechanical and temperature stimuli.

Researchers at Tufts University and Harvard University's Wyss Institute have created tiny biological robots that they call Anthrobots from human tracheal cells that can move across a surface and have been found to encourage the growth of neurons across a region of damage in a lab dish.

A team of engineers at Beihang University, working with a colleague from Tsinghua University, both in China, has designed, built and tested a haptically controlled octopus robot arm that is capable of grasping, lifting and carrying objects on land and underwater. In an article published in the journal Science Robotics, the group describes how they built their robot, how it works and how well it performed when tested under a variety of scenarios.

Modern robots know how to sense their environment and respond to language, but what they don't know is often more important than what they do know. Teaching robots to ask for help is key to making them safer and more efficient.

An inspection design method and procedure by which mobile robots can inspect large pipe structures has been demonstrated with the successful inspection of multiple defects on a three-meter long steel pipe using guided acoustic wave sensors.

You've likely heard that "experience is the best teacher"—but what if learning in the real world is prohibitively expensive? This is the plight of roboticists training their machines on manipulation tasks. Real-world interaction data is costly, so their robots often learn from simulated versions of different activities.

To best assist humans in real-world settings, robots should be able to continuously acquire useful new skills in dynamic and rapidly changing environments. Currently, however, most robots can only tackle tasks that they have been previously trained on and can only acquire new capabilities after further training.

A new robotic tool developed by a team of experts in computer science and biokinesiology could help stroke survivors more accurately track their recovery progress.

Researchers have developed a self-healing robotic gripper for use in soft robotics that is adaptable, recyclable and resilient to damage, thanks to heat-assisted autonomous healing.

Legged robots that artificially replicate the body structure and movements of animals could efficiently complete missions in a wide range of environments, including various outdoor natural settings. To do so, however, these robots should be able to walk on different terrains, such as soil, sand, grass, and so on, without losing balance, getting stuck or falling over.

To teach an AI agent a new task, like how to open a kitchen cabinet, researchers often use reinforcement learning—a trial-and-error process where the agent is rewarded for taking actions that get it closer to the goal.