Most adult humans are innately able to pick up objects in their environment and hold them in ways that facilitate their use. For instance, when picking up a cooking utensil, they would normally grab it from the side that will not be placed inside the cooking pot or pan.
Georgia Tech Ph.D. student Niranjan Kumar has created the Cascaded Compositional Residual Learning (CCRL) framework, enabling a quadrupedal robot to perform increasingly complex tasks without relearning motions, mirroring human learning. Kumar showcased by the robot opening a heavy door using energy transfer, a remarkable achievement in robotics.
A study published in Engineering introduces a novel image-based visual servoing (IBVS) method for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to track dynamic targets in GPS-denied environments.
Adding legs to robots that have minimal awareness of the environment around them can help the robots operate more effectively in difficult terrain, my colleagues and I found.
We've watched the remarkable evolution of robotics over the past decade with models that can walk, talk and make gestures like humans, undertake tasks from moving heavy machinery to delicately manipulating tiny objects, and maintain balance on two or four legs over rough and hostile terrain.
RoboCup is an international annual event designed to showcase advances in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI). At this event, different teams of humanoid robots play soccer against each other,
Dartmouth researchers are crafting soft robotic blocks that can work in unison to create structures able to bear weight, roll, walk, grip objects and transport loads.
Humans often take their fine motor abilities for granted. Recreating the mechanical precision of the human body is no easy task—one that graduate students in CMU's Mechanical Engineering Department hope to simplify through artificial intelligence.
Modular robots—robotic systems that can adapt their body configuration to change locomotion style or move on different terrains—can be highly advantageous for tackling missions in diverse environments. Over the past decade or so, engineers have developed a wide range of modular robots that rely on different designs and underlying mechanisms.
Motion capture (mocap) systems, technologies that can detect and record the movements of humans, animals and objects, are widely used in various settings. For instance, they have been used to shoot movies, to create animations with realistic lip and body movements, in interactive videogame consoles, or even to control robots.
Humans are social creatures and learn from each other, even from a young age. Infants keenly observe their parents, siblings or caregivers. They watch, imitate and replay what they see to learn skills and behaviors.
Over the past decade, robotic systems have revolutionized numerous sectors, including the agricultural and farming sector. Many tasks that were traditionally performed manually can now be potentially automated, boosting efficiency and reducing the workload of farmers and other agricultural workers.
Sea turtles can glide majestically through ocean waters and maneuver like armored vehicles over rocks and sand on land. Their locomotive adaptability makes them particularly interesting to robotics experts, who seek to learn the secrets of their gait and propulsion.
Insects in nature possess amazing flying skills and can attach to and climb on walls of various materials. Insects that can perform flapping-wing flight, climb on a wall, and switch smoothly between the two locomotion regimes provide us with excellent biomimetic models. However, very few biomimetic robots can perform complex locomotion tasks that combine the two abilities of climbing and flying.
A research article exploring the use and interaction of automation technologies and robotics in the environment including in engineering nature has been published in Geoforum.