We tend to take our sense of touch for granted in everyday settings, but it is vital for our ability to interact with our surroundings. Imagine reaching into the fridge to grab an egg for breakfast. As your fingers touch its shell, you can tell the egg is cold, that its shell is smooth, and how firmly you need to grip it to avoid crushing it. These are abilities that robots, even those directly controlled by humans, can struggle with.
Robots are learning to walk and work. While robot dogs are not yet man's best friend, real autonomy and reasoning will make them useful companions in industry, search and rescue and even space exploration. But you must walk before you can run and machines are learning lessons from biology for better walking robots.
Autonomous mobile robots are already being tested and used for such applications as the delivery of parcels, surveillance, search and rescue missions, planetary/space exploration, and the monitoring of the environment. For these robots to successfully complete their missions, they need to be able to operate safely and reliably in uneven outdoor terrains, without colliding with nearby obstacles.
With forecasters at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center (a division of the National Weather Service) predicting above-average hurricane activity this year, a paper published in the peer review magazine Oceanography shows that robotic ocean observing platforms can improve intensity forecasts for hurricanes and tropical storms and should be supported as a crucial component of the ocean infrastructure designed to protect the lives of coastal residents and mitigate the economic impact from storms.
When you visit us at booth 3323 , you will be able to experience a live demo of our robotic tool changer system, as well as live presentations throughout each day.
An electronic skin which can learn from feeling "pain" could help create a new generation of smart robots with human-like sensitivity.
The robots are here. An eagle-sized quadcopter flew above a wooded Schuylkill river bank, counting trees as it was designed to do in the forests of the Andes.
Roboticists worldwide have recently been developing a wide range of sophisticated robotic systems designed to operate and complete missions in different environments. Some of these systems were presented at conferences, events or competitions.
In a global first, scientists at Hokkaido University have demonstrated that molecular robots are able to accomplish cargo delivery by employing a strategy of swarming, achieving a transport efficiency five times greater than that of single robots.
Research scientist, Kevin McKee, tells how his early love of science fiction and social psychology inspired his career, and how he’s helping advance research in ‘queer fairness’, support human-AI collaboration, and study the effects of AI on the LGBTQ+ community.
There are significant numbers of manufacturing and robotics companies which have publicly stated the importance and value of gender equality; they are eager to find female talent.
Prof. Chen Tao's team at the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering (NIMTE) of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has proposed strain-perception-strengthening (SPS) enabled biomimetic soft skin, which realizes the dynamic transformation from tactile to pain perception. The study was published in Advanced Functional Materials.
Blood processing is largely manual.
A team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, has designed and built a tiny millipede-like robot that can climb around in the gut to deliver therapeutic drugs. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes the inspiration for the robot, how it was built and how well it worked when tested on animal tissue.
In industry, people work with robots. While this can accelerate productivity, it does come with health and safety risks. As a result, some robots must be kept separate from human workers. This comes at a heavy financial cost and negatively affects human-robot interactions. If there were sensors on robots to detect a person, then these issues could be solved, but current sensors rely on impractical, rigid, and thick electronics. TU/e researchers have designed a way to make flexible, thin, and accurate sensor electronics that outperform many current sensors. The new breakthrough is published in the Nature Electronics.