In recent years, cafes, supermarkets and online shops have started to trial drone delivery in a handful of locations around the world. More than a dozen drone delivery companies are now running such trials.
Drones and similar small unmanned aerial vehicles (sUAVs) have seen a massive surge in popularity over the past few years due to their innovative applications, such as crop monitoring, search and rescue operations, and coast profiling. The potential of sUAVs in atmospheric science and meteorology has not gone unnoticed either as drones offer an efficient way to place various kinds of sensors up above in the lower atmosphere.
New research from Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute can help robots feel layers of cloth rather than relying on computer vision tools to only see it. The work could allow robots to assist people with household tasks like folding laundry.
A team of researchers from the University of Groningen, the University of Tuscia, Roflight, Lemselobrink and the Royal Netherlands Air Force has designed, built and tested a robot named RobotFalcon fashioned to look and fly like a peregrine falcon as a means of driving off flocks of birds around airports. The group describes their approach in Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
A gripper robot has been developed that can grasp all types of objects, from very fine or thin objects such as acupuncture needles and sewing needles to large objects such as boxes.
Researchers at the Hybrid Robotics Group at UC Berkeley, Simon Fraser University and Georgia Institute of Technology have recently created a reinforcement learning model that allows a quadrupedal robot to efficiently play soccer in the role of goalkeeper. The model introduced in a paper pre-published on arXiv, improves the robot's skills over time, through a trial-and-error process.
For decades researchers have worked to design robotic hands that mimic the dexterity of human hands in the ways they grasp and manipulate objects. However, these earlier robotic hands have not been able to withstand the physical impacts that can occur in unstructured environments. A research team has now developed a compact robotic finger for dexterous hands, while also being capable of withstanding physical impacts in its working environment.
Robotic systems are set to be introduced in a wide range of real-world settings, ranging from roads to malls, offices, airports, and healthcare facilities. To perform consistently well in these environments, however, robots should be able to cope well with uncertainty, adapting to unexpected changes in their surrounding environment while ensuring the safety of nearby humans.
A robot fish that filters microplastics has been brought to life after it won the University of Surrey's public competition—The Natural Robotics Contest.
While most of us are never without our smartphones, robots may also soon become indispensable companions. It certainly seems so based on the recent experiments conducted by researchers in Japan, who developed a hand-held soft robot that can improve the experience of patients while undergoing potentially unpleasant medical procedures, such as injections.
For proper operation, drones usually use accelerometers to determine the direction of gravity. In a new study published in Nature on October 19, 2022, a team of scientists from Delft University of Technology, the CNRS and Aix-Marseille University has shown that drones can estimate the direction of gravity by combining visual detection of movement with a model of how they move. These results may explain how flying insects determine the direction of gravity and are a major step toward the creation of tiny autonomous drones.
Just like a pianist who learns to play their instrument without looking at the keys or a basketball player who puts in countless hours to throw a seemingly effortless jump shot, UCLA mechanical engineers have designed a new class of material that can learn behaviors over time and develop a "muscle memory" of its own, allowing for real-time adaptation to changing external forces.
When it rains, it pours. And when it pours—like it has this year—we get potholes. While minor potholes are an inconvenience, major potholes can destroy car wheels and cause crashes, as dozens of motorists discovered last week on the Hume Freeway.
You might suppose Hollywood is good at predicting the future. Indeed, Robert Wallace, head of the CIA's Office of Technical Service and the US equivalent of MI6's fictional Q, has recounted how Russian spies would watch the latest Bond movie to see what technologies might be coming their way.
For their first trip to a celebrated robotics contest for high school students from scores of countries, a team of Ukrainian teens had a problem.