The skin of cephalopods, such as octopuses, squids and cuttlefish, is stretchy and smart, contributing to these creatures' ability to sense and respond to their surroundings. A Penn State-led collaboration has harnessed these properties to create an artificial skin that mimics both the elasticity and the neurologic functions of cephalopod skin, with potential applications for neurorobotics, skin prosthetics, artificial organs and more.
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, are already widely used in various real-world settings, including the film industry, the military, and the transport sector. In the future, they could also be used to assist human agents during search & rescue missions, to monitor remote or inaccessible environments, and to deliver packages.
Under the amused gaze of many tourists, a robot dog wanders the ancient stone alleys of Pompeii's famous archaeological park.
From action heroes to villainous assassins, biohybrid robots made of both living and artificial materials have been at the center of many sci-fi fantasies, inspiring today's robotic innovations. It's still a long way until human-like robots walk among us in our daily lives, but scientists from Japan are bringing us one step closer by crafting living human skin on robots. The method developed, presented June 9 in the journal Matter, not only gave a robotic finger skin-like texture, but also water-repellent and self-healing functions.
There are up to 66 million tons of waste in our oceans today, and the overwhelming majority of it is found on the ocean floor. However, with the exception of a few potentially dangerous operations using human divers, most endeavors to tackle seabed waste have focused on addressing litter floating on the surface. Researchers from the EU-funded SeaClear project are developing an AI-based solution for cleaning up the ocean floor without putting human lives at risk.
A horse, a zebra and artificial intelligence helped a team of Carnegie Mellon University researchers teach a robot to recognize water and pour it into a glass.
A team of researchers at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, working with one colleague from MIT and another from the University of Stuttgart, has developed a biomimetic elastomeric robot skin that has tactile sensing abilities. Their work has been published in the journal Science Robotics.
Blake Resnick was a 17-year-old growing up in Las Vegas when a gunman firing from a Strip hotel window killed 60 people at an outdoor concert.
Graduate students at the Georgia Institute of Technology have built the first graffiti-painting robot system that mimics the fluidity of human movement. Aptly named GTGraffiti, the system uses motion capture technology to record human painting motions and then composes and processes the gestures to program a cable-driven robot that spray paints graffiti artwork.
A paper published in the April 2022 issue of IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters outlines the AMBER team's method and represents the first instance of combining hybrid zero dynamics (HZD)—a mathematical framework for generating stable locomotion—with a musculoskeletal model to control a robotic assistive device for walking.
During the Automate 2022 trade show on June 6-9 in Detroit, Southwest Research Institute is introducing new automation technology that allows industrial robots to visually classify work and autonomously perform tasks.
We tend to take our sense of touch for granted in everyday settings, but it is vital for our ability to interact with our surroundings. Imagine reaching into the fridge to grab an egg for breakfast. As your fingers touch its shell, you can tell the egg is cold, that its shell is smooth, and how firmly you need to grip it to avoid crushing it. These are abilities that robots, even those directly controlled by humans, can struggle with.
Robots are learning to walk and work. While robot dogs are not yet man's best friend, real autonomy and reasoning will make them useful companions in industry, search and rescue and even space exploration. But you must walk before you can run and machines are learning lessons from biology for better walking robots.
Autonomous mobile robots are already being tested and used for such applications as the delivery of parcels, surveillance, search and rescue missions, planetary/space exploration, and the monitoring of the environment. For these robots to successfully complete their missions, they need to be able to operate safely and reliably in uneven outdoor terrains, without colliding with nearby obstacles.
With forecasters at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center (a division of the National Weather Service) predicting above-average hurricane activity this year, a paper published in the peer review magazine Oceanography shows that robotic ocean observing platforms can improve intensity forecasts for hurricanes and tropical storms and should be supported as a crucial component of the ocean infrastructure designed to protect the lives of coastal residents and mitigate the economic impact from storms.