Machine learning lends a helping 'hand' to prosthetics
Holding an egg requires a gentle touch. Squeeze too hard, and you'll make a mess. Opening a water bottle, on the other hand, needs a little more grip strength.
Jan 20, 2026
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Embodied robotic manipulation investigates robotic and prosthetic limbs that physically interact with the environment using human-like, adaptive control. Work in this area integrates soft robotic structures, tendon-driven and biohybrid actuators, and exoskeletons with rich multimodal sensing, including vision, tactile, and proprioceptive feedback. Machine learning methods such as imitation learning, reinforcement learning, and meta-learning are used to acquire dexterous skills, enable shared and autonomous control, and support intuitive human–robot interaction through haptic interfaces, brain–computer interfaces, and teleoperation systems.
Engineering
Holding an egg requires a gentle touch. Squeeze too hard, and you'll make a mess. Opening a water bottle, on the other hand, needs a little more grip strength.
Jan 20, 2026
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24
Robotics
To reliably complete household chores, assemble products and tackle other manual tasks, robots should be able to adapt their manipulation strategies based on the objects they are working with, similarly to how humans leverage ...
Robotics
Almost half of our attention during face-to-face conversation focuses on lip motion. Yet, robots still struggle to move their lips correctly. Even the most advanced humanoids make little more than muppet mouth gestures—if ...
Jan 14, 2026
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Robotics
Despite rapid robotic automation advancements, most systems struggle to adapt their pre-trained movements to dynamic environments with objects of varying stiffness or weight. To tackle this challenge, researchers from Japan ...
Jan 13, 2026
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Consumer & Gadgets
Exoskeletons are shedding their bulky, sci-fi image to become lightweight, AI-powered consumer devices that manufacturers hope will become as commonplace as smartwatches, targeting everyone from hikers to seniors seeking ...
Jan 8, 2026
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Engineering
Assistive devices that enable those who can no longer move their bodies to control wheelchairs or communicate by moving only their eyes function by using eye-tracking technologies, but these technologies often have limitations ...
Jan 7, 2026
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Robotics
If you accidentally put your hand on a hot object, you'll naturally pull it away fast, before you have to think about it. This happens thanks to sensory nerves in your skin that send a lightning-fast signal to your spinal ...
Robotics
Over the past decades, roboticists have introduced a wide range of systems that can effectively tackle some real-world problems. Most of these robots, however, often perform poorly on tasks that they were not trained on, ...
Robotics
Step inside the Soft Robotics Lab at ETH Zurich, and you find yourself in a space that is part children's nursery, part high-tech workshop and part cabinet of curiosities. The lab benches are strewn with foam blocks, stuffed ...
Dec 16, 2025
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Software
Observing a young man in a wheelchair with motor impairment struggle to communicate with his parents profoundly affected Chetan Jaiswal.
Dec 16, 2025
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