Mobile robots have become increasingly sophisticated and are now being deployed in a growing number of real-world environments, including airports, malls, museums, health care facilities and other settings. So far, however, most of these robots have been introduced in clearly defined indoor environments, as opposed to completing missions that would require them to travel across the city or explore unknown and unmapped spaces.
In what is being called a milestone in mobile robotics, an AI-assisted drone has defeated drones controlled by humans in an obstacle course testing precision flight patterns and speed.
Soft inflatable robots have emerged as a promising paradigm for applications that require inherent safety and adaptability. However, the integration of sensing and control systems in these robots has posed significant challenges without compromising their softness, form factor, or capabilities.
A team of mechanical engineers at Cornell University, working with a colleague from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, has designed and built a tiny robot that is powered by a combustion engine. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes how they built their tiny engine and possible uses for it. Ryan Truby, with Northwestern University, has published a Perspective piece in the same journal issue outlining the work done by the team on this new effort.
Making group decisions is no easy task, especially when the decision makers are a swarm of robots. To increase swarm autonomy in collective perception, a research team at the IRIDIA artificial intelligence research laboratory at the Université Libre de Bruxelles proposed an innovative self-organizing approach in which one robot at a time works temporarily as the "brain" to consolidate information on behalf of the group.
Researchers at the University of Washington have developed small robotic devices that can change how they move through the air by "snapping" into a folded position during their descent. The team published these results in Science Robotics.
Large language models (LLMs) are advanced deep learning techniques that can interact with humans in real-time and respond to prompts about a wide range of topics. These models have gained much popularity after the release of ChatGPT, a model created by OpenAI that surprised many users for its ability to generate human-like answers to their questions.
In a virtual reality study that sheds light on the intricacies of human-robot interactions, researchers have discovered that humans are capable of experiencing empathic embarrassment when witnessing robots go through embarrassing situations.
In fried-chicken-obsessed South Korea, restaurants serving the nation's favorite fast-food dish dot every street corner. But Kang Ji-young's establishment brings something a little different to the table: a robot is cooking the chicken.
Researchers who created a soft robot that could navigate simple mazes without human or computer direction have now built on that work, creating a "brainless" soft robot that can navigate more complex and dynamic environments. The paper, "Physically Intelligent Autonomous Soft Robotic Maze Escaper," was published Sept. 8 in the journal Science Advances.
A newly developed robotic driving seat will be showcased at the British Science Festival by UCL researchers, as part of ongoing efforts to increase public trust in highly automated vehicles.
A Japanese city plans to use robots to enable pupils to attend classes virtually, as truancy rates surge due to anxiety and bullying, officials said Wednesday.
Recently published research assessed human trust when collaborating with eyed and non-eyed robots of the same type. The data suggest that humans might not need human-like machines to trust and work with them. Instead, they even seem to collaborate better with machine-like, eyeless machines.
The current crop of AI robots has made giant leaps when it comes to tiny activities.
Robots made of metal and other solid materials are already widely used in industry. But they are too rigid and cumbersome for fine-motor activities and interaction with people, such as in nursing or medicine. Intensive research is therefore already being carried out into robots made of soft materials: inspiration from nature, such as jellyfish, earthworms, fish or the human body should enable "soft robots" that can move flexibly and adapt to their environment.