Spider webs are engineering marvels constructed by eight-legged experts with 400 million years of accumulated know-how. Much can be learned from the building of the spider's gossamer net and the operation of its sticky trap. Amazingly, garden cross spiders can regenerate lost legs and use them immediately to build a web that is pitch-perfect, even though the new limb is much shorter than the one it replaced. This phenomenon has allowed scientists to probe the rules the animal uses to build its web and how it uses its legs as measuring sticks.
It's been called "the future of warfare." Off-the-shelf unmanned aerial systems (UAS), carrying a payload of explosives or biological material, flown by terrorists or enemy armed forces into a crowded building or military base.
As robots share many characteristics with toys, they could prove to be a valuable tool for teaching children in engaging and innovative ways. In recent years, some roboticists and computer scientists have thus been investigating how robotics systems could be introduced in classroom and pre-school environments.
AI robots are still not sophisticated enough to understand humans or the complexity of social situations, says UNSW's Dr. Masimiliano Cappuccio.
A unique type of modular self-reconfiguring robotic system has been unveiled. The term is a mouthful, but it basically refers to a robotic enterprise that can construct itself out of modules that connect to one another to achieve a certain task.
The research suggests that teaching materials science, mechanical engineering, computer science, biology and chemistry as a combined discipline could help students develop the skills they need to create lifelike artificially intelligent (AI) robots as researchers.
An invention similar to an elephant's trunk has potential benefits for many industries where handling delicate objects is essential, say the UNSW researchers who developed it.
Ph.D. candidate Eunice Njeri Mwangi of the department of Industrial Design has investigated how intuitive gaze-based interactions between robots and humans can help improve the effectiveness of robot tutors. The researcher successfully defended her PHD-thesis on Wednesday 28th of October 2020.
Salamanders have a unique superpower—they can regenerate their spinal cords and regain full functionality. Scientists are working under a cross-disciplinary research project to uncover the mechanisms behind this restorative capability.
Social rewards such as praise are known to enhance various stages of the learning process. Now, researchers from Japan have found that praise delivered by artificial beings such as robots and virtual graphics-based agents can have effects similar to praise delivered by humans, with important practical applications as social services such as education increasingly move to virtual and online platforms.
Nature is one of the greatest sources of inspiration for engineers and computer scientists developing new technological tools. Over the past decade or so, roboticists have developed countless robots inspired by the behavior and biological mechanisms of snakes, fish, cheetahs, birds, insects and countless other animals.
Imperial researchers have created drones that can attach sensors to trees to monitor environmental and ecological changes in forests.
Walmart is laying off the robots it had deployed in about 500 stores to keep tabs on what's on and not on the shelves.
A new high-speed amphibious robot inspired by the movements of cockroaches and lizards, developed by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researchers, swims and runs on top of water at high speeds and crawls on difficult terrain.
People tend to accept robots with humanlike characteristics up to a point. Then, things get strangely uncomfortable.