In an office at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), a soft robotic hand carefully curls its fingers to grasp a small object. The intriguing part isn't the mechanical design or embedded sensors—in fact, the hand contains none. Instead, the entire system relies on a single camera that watches the robot's movements and uses that visual data to control it.
When a multimillion-dollar extraterrestrial vehicle gets stuck in soft sand or gravel—as did the Mars rover Spirit in 2009—Earth-based engineers take over like a virtual tow truck, issuing a series of commands that move its wheels or reverse its course in a delicate, time-consuming effort to free it and continue its exploratory mission.
Researchers at Harvard have created a groundbreaking metasurface that can replace bulky and complex optical components used in quantum computing with a single, ultra-thin, nanostructured layer. This innovation could make quantum networks far more scalable, stable, and compact. By harnessing the power of graph theory, the team simplified the design of these quantum metasurfaces, enabling them to generate entangled photons and perform sophisticated quantum operations — all on a chip thinner than a human hair. It's a radical leap forward for room-temperature quantum technology and photonics.
For robots to be successfully introduced in a wider range of real-world settings, they should be able to safely and reliably navigate rapidly changing environments. While roboticists and computer scientists have introduced a wide range of computational techniques for robot navigation over the past decades, many of them were found to perform poorly in environments that are dynamic, cluttered or characterized by narrow pathways.
AI-generated videos are becoming dangerously convincing and UC Riverside researchers have teamed up with Google to fight back. Their new system, UNITE, can detect deepfakes even when faces aren't visible, going beyond traditional methods by scanning backgrounds, motion, and subtle cues. As fake content becomes easier to generate and harder to detect, this universal tool might become essential for newsrooms and social media platforms trying to safeguard the truth.
Mobile robots are now a key element in various factories, responsible for transporting raw materials, moving items between work stations, and delivering finished goods to storage or dispatch areas. These adaptable platforms can carry tools, components, and entire assemblies.
A new review paper on the latest trends and advancements in intuitive Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) using bio-potential and bio-impedance has been published in the journal Nature Reviews Electrical Engineering. The joint research team was led by Professor Jung Kim of KAIST Department of Mechanical Engineering and Professor Min-kyu Je of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering.
A new slip-prevention method has been shown to improve how robots grip and handle fragile, slippery or asymmetric objects, according to a University of Surrey–led study published in Nature Machine Intelligence. The innovation could pave the way for safer, more reliable automation across industries ranging from manufacturing to health care.
Even the most powerful AI models, including ChatGPT, can make surprisingly basic errors when navigating ethical medical decisions, a new study reveals. Researchers tweaked familiar ethical dilemmas and discovered that AI often defaulted to intuitive but incorrect responses—sometimes ignoring updated facts. The findings raise serious concerns about using AI for high-stakes health decisions and underscore the need for human oversight, especially when ethical nuance or emotional intelligence is involved.
We’re publishing a paper in Nature introducing Aeneas, the first AI model for contextualizing ancient inscriptions.
Imagine a humanoid robot that walks as you do... and never stops working. The World's First Humanoid Robot Capable of Autonomous Battery Swapping. Meet UBTECH New Generation of Industrial Humanoid Robot Walker S2.
Whether strawberries, asparagus or apples: when it comes to harvesting, skilled workers are often in short supply. Many researchers are therefore working on harvesting robots that could provide welcome support to agricultural businesses in the future.
Nature has long served as inspiration for cutting-edge engineering—especially in the realm of underwater propulsion.
A research team from the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering (NIMTE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed a new method to enhance the efficiency of dynamics modeling for industrial robots, tackling long-standing bottlenecks in real-time torque computation.
Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite, previously in preview, is now stable and generally available. This cost-efficient model provides high quality in a small size, and includes 2.5 family features like a 1 million-token context window and multimodality.