In one of the more memorable scenes from the 2002 blockbuster film Minority Report, Tom Cruise is forced to hide from a swarm of spider-like robots scouring a towering apartment complex. While most viewers are likely transfixed by the small, agile bloodhound replacements, a computer engineer might marvel instead at their elegant control system.
Production lines and hygiene zones have to be spotlessly clean. And absolute cleanliness is critical wherever food is processed and medical instruments are handled. Now Fraunhofer researchers have come up with a mobile cleaning device that sanitizes equipment and production spaces to standards in a reproducible way. Equipped with self-learning and autonomous motility systems, this robot automatically detects the degree of fouling and selects the appropriate cleaning procedure.
With every droplet that we can't see, touch, or feel dispersed into the air, the threat of spreading COVID-19 persists. It's become increasingly critical to keep these heavy droplets from lingering—especially on surfaces, which are welcoming and generous hosts.
Over the past decade or so, researchers have been trying to develop techniques that could enable effective collaborative strategies among teams of robots. One of the tasks that teams of robots could complete better than individual robots is simultaneously searching for several targets or objects in their surrounding environment.
Imagine a dressing that releases antibiotics on demand and absorbs excessive wound exudate at the same time. Researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology hope to achieve just that, by developing a smart coating that actively releases and absorbs multiple fluids, triggered by a radio signal. This material is not only beneficial for the health care industry, it is also very promising in the field of robotics or even virtual reality.
A navigation algorithm developed at the University of Zurich enables drones to learn challenging acrobatic maneuvers. Autonomous quadcopters can be trained using simulations to increase their speed, agility and efficiency, which benefits conventional search and rescue operations.
Last year, nearly one third of Australian adults owned a smart speaker device allowing them to call on "Alexa" or "Siri." Now, with more time spent indoors due to COVID-19, smart voice assistants may be playing even bigger roles in people's lives.
Robots can learn how to find things faster by learning how different objects around the house are related, according to work from the University of Michigan. A new model provides robots with a visual search strategy that can teach them to look for a coffee pot nearby if they're already in sight of a refrigerator, in one of the paper's examples.
Training robots to guide injured workers through simulated tasks could make return-to-work evaluations and treatment programs more effective and accessible, according to researchers at the University of Alberta.
The two main pitfalls of robots which imitate the human body are their control and the difficulty encountered when manufacturing them in a cost-effective manner.
The latest challenge for the autonomous vehicle industry: How to assure passengers that the car they are getting in is virus free, even if it doesn't have a driver.
For the next several months, visitors to the Atlanta Botanical Garden will be able to observe the testing of a new high-tech tool in the battle to save some of the world's most endangered species. SlothBot, a slow-moving and energy-efficient robot that can linger in the trees to monitor animals, plants, and the environment below, will be tested near the Garden's popular Canopy Walk.
The next time you go to a hospital for surgery, the surgeon's assistant may be a robot.
When human contact needs to be kept to a minimum, robots can save lives and factories. But when the coronavirus crisis is over, will they amplify job losses?
Robots capable of the sophisticated motions that define advanced physical actions like walking, jumping, and navigating terrain can cost $50,000 or more, making real-world experimentation prohibitively expensive for many.