All posts by Robotics News - Robot News, Robotics, Robots, Robotics Sciences

A team of researchers from the University of Maryland has 3D printed a soft robotic hand that is agile enough to play Nintendo's Super Mario Bros. - and win!

Amazon Inc. has applied for a patent on a package delivery system that involves a primary vehicle for carrying packages destined for multiple drop-off points, and a secondary, much smaller, delivery vehicle that carries packages from the primary vehicle to the end-point destination.

Neuro-evolutionary robotics is an attractive approach to realize collective behaviors for swarms of robots. Despite the large number of studies that have been devoted to it and although many methods and ideas have been proposed, empirical evaluations and comparative analyses are rare.

When there is a gas leak in a large building or at an industrial site, human firefighters currently need to go in with gas sensing instruments. Finding the gas leak may take considerable time, while they are risking their lives. Researchers from TU Delft (the Netherlands), University of Barcelona, and Harvard University have now developed the first swarm of tiny—and hence very safe—drones that can autonomously detect and localize gas sources in cluttered indoor environments.

Basic safety needs in the paleolithic era have largely evolved with the onset of the industrial and cognitive revolutions. We interact a little less with raw materials, and interface a little more with machines.

A group of researchers from Carnegie Mellon and UC Berkeley working with a team at Facebook AI has developed a new type of reactive locomotive system for robots. Called rapid motor adaptation, it allows a robot to traverse a variety of terrain types by learning from past experiences. The group has written a paper describing their new technology and how well it worked when tested and have posted it on the arXiv preprint server.

Production, warehouse, shipping—where goods are produced, stored, sorted or packed, picking also takes place. This means that several individual goods are removed from storage units such as boxes or cartons and reassembled. Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), together with partners from Germany and Canada, want to make picking robots smarter using distributed AI methods. To do this, they are investigating how to use training data from multiple stations, from multiple plants, or even companies without requiring participants to hand over sensitive company data.

By combining two distinct approaches into an integrated workflow, Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) researchers have developed a novel automated process for designing and fabricating customized soft robots. Their method, published in Advanced Materials Technologies, can be applied to other kinds of soft robots—allowing their mechanical properties to be tailored in an accessible manner.

To move efficiently and safely within different environments, robotic systems typically monitor both their own movements and their surroundings as they try to navigate safely and avoid nearby obstacles. The measurements they gather generally make sense with respect to a given frame of reference, also known as a coordinate system.

Russian tech giant Yandex said Tuesday it planned to launch self-driving delivery robots on US college campuses later this year, the company's latest push into foreign markets.

The idea of incorporating actual muscles or neurons into a robotic system might sound like science fiction, but researchers in Carnegie Mellon University's Department of Mechanical Engineering are taking steps to make it a reality.

Many insects and spiders get their uncanny ability to scurry up walls and walk upside down on ceilings with the help of specialized sticky footpads that allow them to adhere to surfaces in places where no human would dare to go.

Over the past few decades, roboticists have created increasingly advanced and sophisticated robotics systems. While some of these systems are highly efficient and achieved remarkable results, they still perform far poorly than humans on several tasks, including those that involve grasping and manipulating objects.

Over the past few decades, roboticists have created increasingly advanced and sophisticated robotics systems. While some of these systems are highly efficient and achieved remarkable results, they still perform far poorly than humans on several tasks, including those that involve grasping and manipulating objects.

A team of researchers from the University of Toronto and Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, has developed a technique for controlling the movements of a live nematode using laser light. In their paper published in the journal Science Robotics, the group describes their technique. Adriana San-Miguel with North Carolina State University has published a Focus piece in the same journal issue outlining the work done by the team.