Archive 08.02.2024

Here, Ryan Guthrie, vice president at TM Robotics, distribution partner of Shibaura Machine, explains how advanced robot controllers can provide enhanced troubleshooting in smart factory settings — while prioritizing data security.

We're bringing Gemini to more Google products

Imagine a coffee cup sitting on a table. Now, imagine a book partially obscuring the cup. As humans, we still know what the coffee cup is even though we can't see all of it. But a robot might be confused.

A study published in the Journal of Field Robotics assessed the world's first unmanned machine designed for autonomous forestry operations.

A small team of roboticists at Carnegie Mellon University has developed a training regimen that allows a robot to start out with limited abilities, such as carrying out a certain task like opening doors or drawers, and to improve as it teaches itself how to modify its techniques when faced with previously unseen challenges.

The Versatile Robots Unload Boxes More Safely, Cost-Effectively, Reliably, and Quickly than Manual Unloading Practices

Semi-autonomous and autonomous robots are being introduced in a growing number of real-world environments, including industrial settings. Industrial robots could speed up the manufacturing of various products by assisting human workers with basic tasks and lightening their workload.

In a landmark study, Associate Professor Yoshihiro Nakata of the University of Electro-Communications, Japan, in collaboration with researchers from Osaka University, conducted research on edible robotics. Published in PLOS ONE, this study is the first to explore the experience of consuming a moving edible robot.

Inspired by the remarkable adaptability observed in biological organisms like the octopus, a breakthrough has been achieved in the field of soft robotics. A research team, led by Professor Jiyun Kim in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at UNIST has successfully developed an encodable multifunctional material that can dynamically tune its shape and mechanical properties in real time.

The multi-coupling system helped Eaton cut down on the time needed for switching hoses and connections by almost 40 percent.

Research involving has shown that a 'swarm' of more than 100 autonomous ground and aerial robots can be supervised by one person without subjecting the individual to an undue workload.

Research involving Oregon State University has shown that a "swarm" of more than 100 autonomous ground and aerial robots can be supervised by one person without subjecting the individual to an undue workload.

The findings represent a big step toward efficiently and economically using swarms in a range of roles from wildland firefighting to package delivery to disaster response in urban environments.

A team of roboticists at New York University, working with a colleague from AI at Meta, has developed a robot that is capable of picking up designated objects in an unfamiliar room and placing them in a new designated location. In their paper posted on the arXiv preprint server, the team describes how the robot was programmed and how well it performed when tested in multiple real-word environments.

Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute Researchers have developed a robot that can crawl inside natural gas pipelines to map them, while also detecting and repairing their leaks when necessary.

The research project, which is near completion, was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) through the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) and its Rapid Encapsulation of Pipelines Avoiding Intensive Replacement (REPAIR) program. Upon its application, use of this system will drastically reduce the costs of pipeline leak detection and leak repair processes. 

The repair is made by the robot applying resin coating from inside, to seal the crack and can be applied for pipes of any material. The robot has a modular configuration which can be modified, which means flexibility for each application. 

For more details, see source at: 

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/news/2024/pipe-repair-robots