In recent years, scientists have introduced a wide variety of robots of all shapes and sizes. Among these are microswimmers, carefully engineered microstructures that can move in water and other liquids.
A figure skater framed only by ragged ice gazes up, almost beseechingly. A goaltender sprawls inside a net, defeat written all over his limbs, even with his face obscured.
Researchers from the RIKEN Guardian Robot Project in Japan have made an android child named Nikola that successfully conveys six basic emotions. The new study, published in Frontiers in Psychology, tested how well people could identify six facial expressions—happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust—which were generated by moving "muscles" in Nikola's face. This is the first time that the quality of android-expressed emotion has been tested and verified for these six emotions.
A recently published study has found that users of unmanned aircraft, also known as drones, need to take a more holistic approach to identifying and mitigating potential risks before undertaking a flight.
A new robotic sensor that mimics the automatic human reaction to heat is being hailed as a world first.
Lethal autonomous weapons systems demand careful consideration but nightmare scenarios of the future won't become reality anytime soon, says a UNSW Canberra military ethicist.
Nearly 10 years ago, local mushroom farmer Murray Good approached engineering professor Mehrdad R. Kermani with a challenge. Could Kermani and his team develop an autonomous mushroom harvesting robot to address the labor shortage Good and mushroom farmers around the world were facing?
ESA's Navigation Laboratory has a new recruit: this drone can carry different types of satellite navigation receivers to collect data for follow-on analysis.
Imagine a small autonomous vehicle that could drive over land, stop, and flatten itself into a quadcopter. The rotors start spinning, and the vehicle flies away. Looking at it more closely, what do you think you would see? What mechanisms have caused it to morph from a land vehicle into a flying quadcopter? You might imagine gears and belts, perhaps a series of tiny servo motors that pulled all its pieces into place.
Over the past few decades, roboticists and computer scientists have developed increasingly advanced systems that can interact with humans and complete numerous everyday tasks. While robots are rapidly advancing, for humans to effectively start using them they should be able to trust in their abilities and find them helpful and appealing.
The word robot may conjure images of hard, metallic bodies that are invulnerable to attacks. In modern day-to-day life, however, robots are hardly needed for defending against enemy attacks. Instead, they are required to perform more mundane tasks such as handling delicate objects and interacting with humans. Unfortunately, conventional robots perform poorly at such seemingly simple tasks. Moreover, they're heavy and often noisy.
To operate autonomously in a various unfamiliar settings and successfully complete missions, mobile robots should be able to adapt to changes in their surroundings. Visual teach and repeat (VT&R) systems are a promising class of approaches for training robots to adaptively navigate environments.
A team of researchers at Johannes Kepler University Linz has used biodegradable materials as ink to print 3D soft robots. In their paper published in the journal Science Robotics, the group describes how they developed their ink and how well it performed. Yu Jun Tan, with the National University of Singapore has published a Focus piece in the same journal issue, outlining the issues researchers have faced in creating robots out of biodegradable materials and the work done by the team in Austria.
People are more comfortable talking to female rather than male robots working in service roles in hotels, according to a study by Washington State University researcher Soobin Seo.
A new drive system for flapping wing autonomous robots has been developed by a University of Bristol team, using a new method of electromechanical zipping that does away with the need for conventional motors and gears.