Robots have come a long way since the Roomba. Today, drones are starting to deliver door to door, self-driving cars are navigating some roads, robo-dogs are aiding first responders, and still more bots are doing backflips and helping out on the factory floor. Still, Luca Carlone thinks the best is yet to come.
In a fascinating blend of technology and artistry, researchers present a study in PeerJ Computer Science, showcasing how humanoid robots can collaborate seamlessly with human musicians during live musical performances. This innovative work highlights the evolving role of robotics in entertainment and creativity.
Researchers at the University of Twente have developed CEINMS-RT, an open-source platform designed to transform the field of wearable robotics.
In the same way that terrestrial life evolved from ocean swimmers to land walkers, soft robots are progressing, too, thanks to recent Cornell research in battery development and design.
When designing a robot, such as Boston Dynamics' anthropomorphic robot Atlas, which appears exercising and sorting boxes, fiducial markers are the guides that help them move, detect objects and determine their exact location. It is a machine vision tool that is used to estimate objects' positions. At first glance they are flat, high-contrast black and white square codes, roughly resembling the QR marking system, but with an advantage: they can be detected at much greater distances.
Researchers at the Technical University of Darmstadt and the Helmholtz Center Dresden-Rossendorf have developed flexible robot wings that are moved by magnetic fields. Inspired by the efficiency and adaptability of the wings of the monarch butterfly, they enable precise movements without electronics or batteries.
We humans excel at generalization. If you taught a toddler to identify the color red by showing her a red ball, a red truck and a red rose, she will most likely correctly identify the color of a tomato, even if it is the first time she sees one.
Recent advances in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) are enabling the development of a wide range of systems with unique characteristics designed for varying real-world applications. These include robots that can engage in activities traditionally only completed by humans, such as sketching, painting and even hand-writing documents.
As part of the ongoing war in Ukraine, one night in late November, Russia sent a swarm of 188 drones to attack Ukrainian infrastructure like electrical utilities, as well as residential areas, according to news reports. Ukrainian forces said they shot down 76 drones, but the damage was still extensive. Those kinds of attacks are continuing almost daily now.
Research in the International Journal of Computational Vision and Robotics could lead to faster and more accurate robots for high-precision tasks in factories.
A team of roboticists at Sony Computer Science Laboratories Inc. and the NeuroPiano Institute, in Kyoto, reports that a robotic exoskeleton strapped to the top of a piano player's hand allowed it to control the player's fingers during speed exercises, leading to improvements in playing fast-moving piano tunes. In their study, published in the journal Science Robotics, the group conducted experiments with their exoskeleton hand robot with more than 100 trained piano players.
Making Artificial Intelligence systems robustly perceive humans remains one of the most intricate challenges in computer vision. Among the most complex problems is reconstructing 3D models of human hands, a task with wide-ranging applications in robotics, animation, human-computer interaction, and augmented and virtual reality. The difficulty lies in the nature of hands themselves, often obscured while holding objects or contorted into challenging orientations during tasks like grasping.
A complex sense of touch for individuals living with spinal cord injuries is a step closer to reality. A study published in Science, paves the way for complex touch sensations through brain stimulation while using an extracorporeal bionic limb, that is attached to a chair or wheelchair. The paper is titled "Tactile edges and motion via patterned microstimulation of the human somatosensory cortex."
Accurate object pose estimation refers to the ability of a robot to determine both the position and orientation of an object. It is essential for robotics, especially in pick-and-place tasks, which are crucial in industries such as manufacturing and logistics.
The robotics industry should be creating robots that could be reprogrammed and repurposed for other tasks once its life span is completed, University of Bristol and University of West England researchers have advised.