Over the past decades, roboticists have introduced various systems that can replicate specific human motions and behaviors with remarkable accuracy. Some of these robots can even compete with other robots or humans in specific sports, such as the robots showcased at the RoboCup, an international robotics event at which robots play soccer with each other.
Students recently unveiled their invention of a robotic actuator -- the 'muscle' that converts energy into a robot's physical movement -- that has the ability to detect punctures or pressure, heal the injury and repair its damage-detecting 'skin.'
Combining both wheeled and legged mobility capabilities, it is designed for demanding operational scenarios, driving intelligent upgrades across various applications including industrial inspection and emergency rescue operations.
A University of Nebraska–Lincoln engineering team is another step closer to developing soft robotics and wearable systems that mimic the ability of human and plant skin to detect and self-heal injuries.
A research team has developed autonomous driving software that allows inexpensive sensors to detect transparent obstacles such as glass walls, providing an alternative to high-performance sensors. This technology can be used in existing robots, negating the need for additional equipment while ensuring detection performance that is equal to that offered by expensive conventional equipment.
Claire chatted to Nick Thompson from BOW about software that makes robots easier to program.
Nick Thompson is CEO of BOW and exited founder of One Beyond Ltd, an international software development firm. His career started in 1997 as a software engineer, founded One Beyond in the early 2000’s and after 20 years in the business sold to a private equity firm. In 2022 he was recognised as one of the UK’s ‘Most Ambitious Business Leaders’ by LDC Private Equity Group.
A team of roboticists and AI specialists at the Robotics & Artificial Intelligence Lab in Korea has designed, built and successfully tested a four-legged robot that is capable of conducting high-speed parkour maneuvers. In their paper published in the journal Science Robotics, the group describes how they gave their robot a controller capable of both planning and tracking its own movements to allow it to freely traverse a range of environments.
Frameworks are a critical, if underappreciated, component of any space exploration mission. They can range from the overall mission architecture, capturing scientific and technical goals, to the structure of messages sent between two internal components of the system.
A small team of roboticists at Robotic Systems Lab, ETH Zurich, in Switzerland, has designed, built and tested a four-legged robot capable of playing badminton with human players.
An ultra-light robotic prosthetic hand has been developed that enables both precision fingertip control and shape-adaptive gripping through simple motion commands. The hand features an innovative mechanism that allows two degrees of freedom in the thumb (adduction/abduction and flexion/extension) to be independently controlled by a single actuator, achieving exceptional user convenience and weight reduction.
In this case study, we focus on the autonomous mobile robot (AMR), which can navigate and perform tasks in active environments without direct human control. Safe navigation and obstacle avoidance are fundamentally important for AMRs in the workplace.
Interactive robots should not just be passive companions, but active partners—like therapy horses who respond to human emotion—say University of Bristol researchers.
The AAMAS 2025 best paper and demo awards were presented at the 24th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, which took place from 19-23 May 2025 in Detroit. The Distinguished Dissertation Award was also recently announced. The winners in the various categories are as follows:
Best Paper Award
Winner
- Soft Condorcet Optimization for Ranking of General Agents, Marc Lanctot, Kate Larson, Michael Kaisers, Quentin Berthet, Ian Gemp, Manfred Diaz, Roberto-Rafael Maura-Rivero, Yoram Bachrach, Anna Koop, Doina Precup
Finalists
- Azorus: Commitments over Protocols for BDI Agents, Amit K. Chopra, Matteo Baldoni, Samuel H. Christie V, Munindar P. Singh
- Curiosity-Driven Partner Selection Accelerates Convention Emergence in Language Games, Chin-Wing Leung, Paolo Turrini, Ann Nowe
- Reinforcement Learning-based Approach for Vehicle-to-Building Charging with Heterogeneous Agents and Long Term Rewards, Fangqi Liu, Rishav Sen, Jose Paolo Talusan, Ava Pettet, Aaron Kandel, Yoshinori Suzue, Ayan Mukhopadhyay, Abhishek Dubey
- Ready, Bid, Go! On-Demand Delivery Using Fleets of Drones with Unknown, Heterogeneous Energy Storage Constraints, Mohamed S. Talamali, Genki Miyauchi, Thomas Watteyne, Micael Santos Couceiro, Roderich Gross
Pragnesh Jay Modi Best Student Paper Award
Winners
- Decentralized Planning Using Probabilistic Hyperproperties, Francesco Pontiggia, Filip Macák, Roman Andriushchenko, Michele Chiari, Milan Ceska
- Large Language Models for Virtual Human Gesture Selection, Parisa Ghanad Torshizi, Laura B. Hensel, Ari Shapiro, Stacy Marsella
Runner-up
- ReSCOM: Reward-Shaped Curriculum for Efficient Multi-Agent Communication Learning, Xinghai Wei, Tingting Yuan, Jie Yuan, Dongxiao Liu, Xiaoming Fu
Finalists
- Explaining Facial Expression Recognition, Sanjeev Nahulanthran, Leimin Tian, Dana Kulic, Mor Vered
- Agent-Based Analysis of Green Disclosure Policies and Their Market-Wide Impact on Firm Behavior, Lingxiao Zhao, Maria Polukarov, Carmine Ventre
Blue Sky Ideas Track Best Paper Award
Winner
- Grounding Agent Reasoning in Image Schemas: A Neurosymbolic Approach to Embodied Cognition, François Olivier, Zied Bouraoui
Finalist
- Towards Foundation-model-based multiagent system to Accelerate AI for social impact, Yunfan Zhao, Niclas Boehmer, Aparna Taneja, Milind Tambe
Best Demo Award
Winner
- Serious Games for Ethical Preference Elicitation, Jayati Deshmukh, Zijie Liang, Vahid Yazdanpanah, Sebastian Stein, Sarvapali Ramchurn
Victor Lesser Distinguished Dissertation Award
The Victor Lesser Distinguished Dissertation Award is given for dissertations in the field of autonomous agents and multiagent systems that show originality, depth, impact, as well as quality of writing, supported by high-quality publications.
Winner
- Jannik Peters. Thesis title: Facets of Proportionality: Selecting Committees, Budgets, and Clusters
Runner-up
- Lily Xu. Thesis title: High-stakes decisions from low-quality data: AI decision-making for planetary health
Interactive robots should not just be passive companions, but active partners -- like therapy horses who respond to human emotion -- say researchers.
Specialized robots that can both fly and drive typically touch down on land before attempting to transform and drive away. But when the landing terrain is rough, these robots sometimes get stuck and are unable to continue operating.