A bird flaps its wings, glides using air currents and then smoothly descends to perch on a pole. But this is not just any bird, it's a robot bird. And robots like these could in the next decade be used to respond to emergencies or to hunt down drones posing a threat to safety or security.
Robots can perform jobs underwater that are too complex or dangerous for humans. That is, if they can manage on their own, because no one can help them down there. The REMARO project works on its control systems and trains Ph.D. students in programming work.
Until now, competing types of robotic hand designs offered a trade-off between strength and durability. One commonly used design, employing a rigid pin joint that mimics the mechanism in human finger joints, can lift heavy payloads, but is easily damaged in collisions, particularly if hit from the side. Meanwhile, fully compliant hands, typically made of molded silicone, are more flexible, harder to break, and better at grasping objects of various shapes, but they fall short on lifting power.
While our facial expressions play a huge role in building trust, most robots still sport the blank and static visage of a professional poker player. With the increasing use of robots in locations where robots and humans need to work closely together, from nursing homes to warehouses and factories, the need for a more responsive, facially realistic robot is growing more urgent.
Over the years, robots have gotten quite good at identifying objects—as long as they're out in the open.
Creating robots that can perform acrobatic movements such as flips or spinning jumps can be highly challenging. Typically, in fact, these robots require sophisticated hardware designs, motion planners and control algorithms.
Researchers of the Integrated Systems Engineering Group of the University of Malaga (UMA) have designed a telepresence robot that enables people suffering from COVID-19 to talk to their loved ones.
Spending on global offshore renewable energy infrastructure over the next ten years is expected to reach over US$16 billion (£11.3bn). This involves creating an extra 2.5 million kilometers of global submarine cables by 2030.
Agility Robotics, a branch of Oregon State University, has just revealed a new bipedal robot called Cassie. Unlike the many four-legged and four-wheeled robots currently in existence, Cassie will walk much more like a human. This kind of movement allows for far easier travel across diverse types of terrain while delivering packages or even contributing to disaster relief efforts.
A team of researchers at Yale University has developed a new kind of algorithm to improve the functionally of a robot hand. In their paper published in the journal Science Robotics, the group describes their algorithm and then demonstrate, via videos, how it can be used.
The models that robots use to do tasks work well in the structured environment of the laboratory. Outside the lab, however, even the most sophisticated models may prove inadequate in new situations or in difficult to model tasks, such as working with soft materials like rope and cloth.
Using a robotic 'Third Thumb' can impact how the hand is represented in the brain, finds a new study led by UCL researchers.
The rhythmic motions of hair-like cilia move liquids around cells or propel the cells themselves. In nature, cilia flap independently, and mimicking these movements with artificial materials requires complex mechanisms. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces have made artificial cilia that move in a wave-like fashion when a rotating magnetic field is applied, making them suitable for versatile, climbing soft robots and microfluidic devices.
Research focusing on swarm robotics typically uses theoretical approaches to describe robotic systems in an abstract way. A theoretical model that is often used in robotics studies is OBLOT, an approach that represents robots as simple systems, all identical, without a memory and unable to communicate with each other.
On May 14, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ship Okeanos Explorer will depart from Port Canaveral in Florida on a two-week expedition led by NOAA Ocean Exploration, featuring the technology demonstration of an autonomous underwater vehicle. Called Orpheus, this new class of submersible robot will showcase a system that will help it find its way and identify interesting scientific features on the seafloor.