Robotics

A Roboeatz app allows customers to order and pay for their dish before picking it up at the cafe. A pasta order comes in and the robotic arm springs into action at the Roboeatz eatery in Riga. After five minutes of gyrations, a piping hot plate is ready. The Riga...

A schematic of a salamander walking that demonstrates its lateral body bending. Credit: Ishiguro-Kano lab Researchers at Tohoku University and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, with the support of the Human Frontier Science Program, have decoded the flexible motor control mechanisms underlying salamander walking. Their findings were...

SERVITA. In 2017, while on holiday with his family in Cornwall, Loughborough University student Dominic Leatherland witnessed a teenager become detached from their bodyboard and pulled out to sea due to rough conditions. He watched as two off-duty lifeguards battled the waves to reach the struggling casualty, but the height...

Credit: Boston Dynamics If you're homeless and looking for temporary shelter in Hawaii's capital, expect a visit from a robotic police dog that will scan your eye to make sure you don't have a fever. That's just one of the ways public safety agencies are starting to use Spot, the...

Credit: University of Sheffield New research that could help us use swarms of robots to tackle forest fires, conduct search and rescue operations at sea and diagnose problems inside the human body, has been published by engineers at the University of Sheffield. The study, led by Dr. Andreagiovanni Reina from...

Credit: Arapi et al. Over the past few decades, roboticists and computer scientists have developed a variety of data-based techniques for teaching robots how to complete different tasks. To achieve satisfactory results, however, these techniques should be trained on reliable and large datasets, preferably labeled with information related to the...

Credit: Simon Fraser University A new robotic window and building façade cleaner currently being developed has the potential to be three times faster, safer, and more efficient than current methods, according to its co-inventors. SFU postdoctoral researcher Hossein Kamali and co-founder Mohammad Dabiri hope their robotic window cleaner will increase...

Credit: Oregon State University Cassie the robot, invented at Oregon State University and produced by OSU spinout company Agility Robotics, has made history by traversing 5 kilometers, completing the route in just over 53 minutes. Cassie was developed under the direction of robotics professor Jonathan Hurst with a 16-month, $1...

Smart functional robot that realizes simultaneous disinfection of both air and object surface developed by HFIPS researchers. Credit: ZHANG Wen Recently, researchers from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences developed a smart functional robot that realized simultaneous disinfection of both air and object...

Robotics researchers at Northeastern are advancing a technology to help robots move gracefully. Credit: Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University Researchers at Northeastern are working to eliminate the stiff, herky-jerky motions in robotic arms to make them graceful and deft enough to gently pick up an egg or sturdy enough to stack dinner...

A new "moonshot" project from Google parent Alphabet will develop software for industrial robots. Google's parent Alphabet unveiled a new "moonshot" project to develop software for robotics which could be used in a wide range of industries. The new unit, dubbed Intrinsic, will "become an independent Alphabet company," and seek...

A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in Europe has found that swarms of tiny dumb vibrating robots are capable of carrying out sophisticated actions such as transporting objects or squeezing through tunnels. In their paper published in the journal Science Robotics, the group describes experiments they conducted with...

A robot developed by Associate Professor Hanna Kurniawati. Credit: Australian National University ANU researcher Hanna Kurniawati is helping robots problem solve and care. Her work has not just shaped how AI works every day; it's been recognized with a major global prize. Today's robots are so advanced that they are...

Credit: NASA Large space structures, such as telescopes and spacecraft, should ideally be assembled directly in space, as they are difficult or impossible to launch from Earth as a single piece. In several cases, however, assembling these technologies manually in space is either highly expensive or unfeasible. In recent years,...

A drone flying through smoke to visualize the complex aerodynamic effects. Credit: Robotics and Perception Group, University of Zurich For the first time, an autonomously flying quadrotor has outperformed two human pilots in a drone race. The success is based on a novel algorithm that was developed by researchers of...

Service robots can support people with caring for their pet companions. Credit: Shutterstock Robopets are artificially intelligent machines created to look like an animal (usually a cat or dog, but they can be any animal). There are numerous robopets on the market right now, being sold to consumers as "pets"...

An 8-bit pneumatic RAM chip used to help a soft robot control its movements. The chip uses microfluidic valves to control airflow instead of electronic transistors. Credit: William Grover/UCR Engineers at UC Riverside have unveiled an air-powered computer memory that can be used to control soft robots. The innovation overcomes...

Credit: University of Maryland A team of researchers from the University of Maryland has 3D printed a soft robotic hand that is agile enough to play Nintendo's Super Mario Bros. - and win! The feat, highlighted on the front cover of the latest issue of Science Advances, demonstrates a promising...

The robot and its reference model. a The e-puck robot in the configuration used for the experiments presented in the paper. Details are provided in “Methods”. b The reference model RM 1.1, which formally describes the programming interface through which, in the experiments presented in the paper, the control software interacts...

Credit: USPTO Amazon Inc. has applied for a patent on a package delivery system that involves a primary vehicle for carrying packages destined for multiple drop-off points, and a secondary, much smaller, delivery vehicle that carries packages from the primary vehicle to the end-point destination. Over the past several years,...