At Arla's dairy in Taulov, Denmark, apron-clad dairy workers have been joined by a shiny silver and red-eyed colleague—a robot that helps them produce delicious Danish Havarti, Danbo and Maribo cheeses.
A team of researchers at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)'s Center for Vision, Cognition, Learning, and Autonomy (VCLA), led by Prof. Song-Chun Zhu, recently developed an approach that could help to align a human user's assessment of what a robot can do with its true capabilities. This approach, presented in a paper published in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, is based on a new algorithm that simultaneously optimizes the physical cost and expressiveness of a robot's motion, to determine how well human observers would estimate its reachable workspace.
Developing robots inspired by animals and other biological systems has become a key research focus for many roboticists worldwide. By artificially reproducing biological mechanisms, these robots could help to automate complex real-world tasks in efficient and reliable ways.
Robots have helped humans in countless work environments to a point that the latter—in some cases—developed strong emotional bonds with them.
Researchers have developed self-healing, biodegradable, 3D-printed materials that could be used in the development of realistic artificial hands and other soft robotics applications.
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.