Commercial unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have the potential to almost halve the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions of urban freight transport compared to small light commercial vehicles (LCVs), providing an unprecedented opportunity for the logistics industry to reduce its environmental impact. This is just one of the breakthrough findings from a brand new report published today by Inmarsat, the world leader in global, mobile satellite communications, and Cranfield University, examining the wealth of new possibilities and applications unlocked by commercial UAVs.
Azobenzene-functionalized liquid crystalline materials can be operated by remote light-stimuli without complicated circuits or parts and thus are attracting great attention in fields such as human interfaces, haptic devices, and miniaturized soft robots.
As robots become increasingly sophisticated and advanced, they will typically require a growing amount of hardware components, including robotic limbs, motors, sensors and actuators. In addition, robots have integrated computers that process data collected by their sensors and plan their future actions accordingly.
A loping cheetah dashes across a rolling field, bounding over sudden gaps in the rugged terrain. The movement may look effortless, but getting a robot to move this way is an altogether different prospect.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation is announcing the release of Raspberry Pi Build HAT—an add-on device that allows users to use Raspberry Pi hardware to control LEGO Technic motors. On the Raspberry Pi News page, company rep Richard Hayler notes that the new device is the result of a collaborative effort between Raspberry Pi and LEGO Education and he describes the new device and the ways it may be used.
Last year, the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems organized the Real Robot Challenge, a competition that challenged academic labs to come up with solutions to the problem of repositioning and reorienting a cube using a low-cost robotic hand. The teams participating in the challenge were asked to solve a series of object manipulation problems with varying difficulty levels.
Teams of robots could help users to complete numerous tasks more rapidly and efficiently, as well as keeping human agents out of harm's way during hazardous operations. In recent years, some studies have particularly explored the potential of robot swarms in assisting human agents during search-and-rescue missions; for instance, while seeking out survivors of natural disasters or delivering food and survival kits to them.
As a robotics engineer, Yasemin Ozkan-Aydin, assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University of Notre Dame, gets her inspiration from biological systems. The collective behaviors of ants, honeybees and birds to solve problems and overcome obstacles is something researchers have developed in aerial and underwater robotics. Developing small-scale swarm robots with the capability to traverse complex terrain, however, comes with a unique set of challenges.
Exoskeleton technology is becoming increasingly effective.
In the last few years, mechanically assistive exosuits, long depicted in works of popular science fiction and film, have finally started to see commercial deployment, according to Aaron Young, researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Most of these exosuits have a so-called passive design, assisting the wearer with unpowered elements like springs.
To efficiently navigate their surrounding environments and complete missions, unmanned aerial systems (UASs) should be able to detect multiple objects in their surroundings and track their movements over time. So far, however, enabling multi-object tracking in unmanned aerial vehicles has proved to be fairly challenging.
A team of researchers affiliated with a host of institutions in the Republic of Korea has developed a tiny, soft robotic hand that can grasp small objects and measure their temperature. They have published their results in the journal Science Robotics.
Most know the white cane as a simple-but-crucial tool that assists people with visual impairments in making their way through the world. Researchers at Stanford University have now introduced an affordable robotic cane that guides people with visual impairments safely and efficiently through their environments.
In recent years, roboticists have created a variety of systems that could eventually operate in real-world environments. As most real-world settings, particularly public spaces, are dynamic and unpredictable, to efficiently navigate these environments robots should be able to gain a good understanding of their surroundings.
Nissan's "intelligent factory" hardly has any human workers. The robots do the work, including welding and mounting. They do the paint jobs and inspect their own paint jobs.