Step by mechanical step, dozens of humanoid robots took to the streets of Beijing early Saturday, joining thousands of their flesh-and-blood counterparts in a world-first half marathon showcasing China's drive to lead the global race in cutting-edge technology.
EU researchers have developed adaptable robots that could transform the way we recycle electronic waste, benefiting both the environment and the economy.
A team of cyber-systems researchers, engineers, optical specialists and roboticists at Zhejiang University, in China, has developed a navigation system for quadcopter drones that gives them the ability to carry out precise flight maneuvers autonomously. As reported in the journal Science Robotics, the group developed a multi-pronged system that allows quadcopter drones to carry out complex aerobatic maneuvers autonomously, in a safe manner, both indoors and outdoors.
The development of increasingly sophisticated sensors can facilitate the advancement of various technologies, including robots, security systems, virtual reality (VR) equipment and sophisticated prosthetics. Multimodal tactile sensors, which can pick up different types of touch-related information (e.g., pressure, texture and type of material), are among the most promising for applications that can benefit from the artificial replication of the human sense of touch.
The Harvard RoboBee has long shown it can fly, dive, and hover like a real insect. But what good is the miracle of flight without a safe way to land?
For the first time, a drone has beaten human pilots in an international drone racing competition, marking a new milestone in the development of artificial intelligence. On Saturday April 14, 2025, two drone racing events took place simultaneously: The Falcon Cup Finals for human pilots and the A2RL Drone Championship for AI-powered, autonomous drones.
RoboCake is ready. This edible robotic cake is the result of a collaboration between researchers from EPFL (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne), the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT-Italian Institute of Technology) and pastry chefs and food scientists from EHL in Lausanne.
Over the past decades, researchers have developed a wide range of advanced social and assistance robots that could soon be introduced into households worldwide. Understanding how the introduction of these systems might impact the lives of users and their interactions with others living in their homes is crucial, as it could inform the further improvement of robots before their widespread deployment.
When personal computers were first invented, only a small group of people who understood programming languages could use them. Today, anyone can look up the local weather, play their favorite song or even generate code with just a few keystrokes.
Insect-scale robots can squeeze into places their larger counterparts can't, like deep into a collapsed building to search for survivors after an earthquake. However, as they move through the rubble, tiny crawling robots might encounter tall obstacles they can't climb over or slanted surfaces they will slide down. While aerial robots could avoid these hazards, the amount of energy required for flight would severely limit how far the robot can travel into the wreckage before it needs to return to base and recharge.
It's a game a lot of us played as children—and maybe even later in life: unspooling measuring tape to see how far it would extend before bending. But to engineers at the University of California San Diego, this game was an inspiration, suggesting that measuring tape could become a great material for a robotic gripper.
Angiography is a widely used medical imaging technique that allows medical researchers and doctors to capture the vascular network (i.e., blood vessels) using contrast agents, substances that enhance the visibility of specific structures inside the body when exposed to X-rays or other imaging approaches. Conventional angiography techniques rely on contrast agents that are distributed through blood vessels, leveraging the natural flow of blood in the body.
A team of researchers led by Professor Keisuke Takahashi at the Faculty of Science, Hokkaido University, have created FLUID (Flowing Liquid Utilizing Interactive Device), an open-source robotic system constructed using a 3D printer and off-the-shelf electronic components.
A tiny, soft, flexible robot that can crawl through earthquake rubble to find trapped victims or travel inside the human body to deliver medicine may seem like science fiction, but an international team led by researchers at Penn State are pioneering such adaptable robots by integrating flexible electronics with magnetically controlled motion.
Researchers at EPFL's Neuroengineering Laboratory, led by Pavan Ramdya, aim to replicate the workings of the brain of the common fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. EPFL spoke with Ramdya about the exciting prospects for robotics.