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.
As mobile robots become more advanced, they also become easier to deploy in a wide range of real-world settings. One of the factors that will enable their large-scale implementation is their ability to autonomously move around within different types of environments.
Imagine being able to morph your legs into flippers before you jump in the water. Yale researchers have created a robot that accomplishes this feat through a process they dubbed "adaptive morphogenesis."
Researchers have designed a state-of-the-art walking robot that could revolutionize large construction projects in space. They tested the feasibility of the robot for the in-space assembly of a 25m Large Aperture Space Telescope. They present their findings in Frontiers in Robotics and AI. A scaled-down prototype of the robot also showed promise for large construction applications on Earth.
For years, the Stanford Biomechatronics Laboratory has captured imaginations with their exoskeleton emulators—lab-based robotic devices that help wearers walk and run faster, with less effort. Now, these researchers will turn heads out in the "wild" with their first untethered exoskeleton, featured in a paper published Oct. 12 in Nature.
The unassuming Pacific mole crab, Emerita analoga, is about to make some waves. UC Berkeley researchers have debuted a unique robot inspired by this burrowing crustacean that may someday help evaluate the soil of agricultural sites, collect marine data and study soil and rock conditions at construction sites.
Researchers at Kyoto University and Nagoya University in Japan have recently devised a new, automatic approach for designing robots that could simultaneously improve their shape, structure, movements, and controller components. This approach, presented in a paper published in Artificial Life and Robotics, draws inspiration from the evolution of vertebrates, the broad category of animals that possess a backbone or spinal column, which includes mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians, and fishes.
Fifteen bachelor's and master's degree students from the Barcelona School of Industrial Engineering (ETSEIB) of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya · BarcelonaTech (UPC) share the same dream: improving the quality of life of people with disabilities using assistive technologies. Specifically, the young biomedical engineering team Arm2u is developing a transradial prosthesis—which replaces an arm missing below the elbow—with myoelectric control (i.e., controlled by the natural electrical signals produced by muscle contraction).
A team led by the University of California San Diego has developed a new system of algorithms that enables four-legged robots to walk and run on challenging terrain while avoiding both static and moving obstacles.
An early prototype of Tesla Inc.'s proposed Optimus humanoid robot slowly and awkwardly walked onto a stage, turned, and waved to a cheering crowd at the company's artificial intelligence event Friday.
Elon Musk on Friday showed off the latest version of a humanoid robot that the world's richest man said could one day eliminate poverty.