The United States military plans to start using thousands of autonomous weapons systems in the next two years in a bid to counter China's growing power, US Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks announced in a speech on Monday.
Coming to a tight spot near you: CLARI, the little, squishable robot that can passively change its shape to squeeze through narrow gaps—with a bit of inspiration from the world of bugs.
Remember when IBM's Deep Blue won against Gary Kasparov at chess in 1996, or Google's AlphaGo crushed the top champion Lee Sedol at Go, a much more complex game, in 2016? These competitions where machines prevailed over human champions are key milestones in the history of artificial intelligence. Now a group of researchers from the University of Zurich and Intel has set a new milestone with the first autonomous system capable of beating human champions at a physical sport: drone racing.
In recent years, roboticists and computer scientists have developed a variety of highly innovative systems that could assist people with physical disabilities, improve their quality of life and aid their rehabilitation. These systems include soft wearable technologies, such as smart assistive gloves.
Most people take getting dressed for granted. But data from the National Center for Health Statistics reveals that 92% of nursing facility residents and at-home care patients require assistance with dressing.
Korean researchers say they have devised a robot that can self-destruct and leave no trace other than an oily puddle.
Scientific exploration of the deep ocean has largely remained inaccessible to most people because of barriers to access due to infrastructure, training, and physical ability requirements for at-sea oceanographic research.
Imagine you want to carry a large, heavy box up a flight of stairs. You might spread your fingers out and lift that box with both hands, then hold it on top of your forearms and balance it against your chest, using your whole body to manipulate the box.
Flying robotic systems have already proved to be highly promising for tackling numerous real-world problems, including explorations of remote environments, the delivery of packages in inaccessible sites, and searches for survivors of natural disasters. In recent years, roboticists and computer scientists have introduced a multitude of aerial vehicle designs, each with distinct advantages and features.
An innovative bimanual robot displays tactile sensitivity close to human-level dexterity using AI to inform its actions.
Ever wonder why the most advanced robots always seem to have hard bodies? Why not more pliable ones, like humans have?
The search for innovative materials will be greatly assisted by software that can suggest new experimental possibilities and also control the robotic systems that check them out.
A tailsitter is a fixed-wing aircraft that takes off and lands vertically (it sits on its tail on the landing pad), and then tilts horizontally for forward flight. Faster and more efficient than quadcopter drones, these versatile aircraft can fly over a large area like an airplane but also hover like a helicopter, making them well-suited for tasks like search-and-rescue or parcel delivery.
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.