Robotics news

Robotics

Feeling is believing: Bionic hand 'knows' what it's touching, grasps like a human

Johns Hopkins University engineers have developed a pioneering prosthetic hand that can grip plush toys, water bottles, and other everyday objects like a human, carefully conforming and adjusting its grasp to avoid damaging ...

Robotics

Sony's aibo dog could soon walk quietly and perform elaborate dance routines

Aibo, the cute-looking robot puppy developed by Sony, was designed to be a household companion. The robot can already emulate many of the movements and behaviors of real dogs, such as walking on four legs, responding when ...

Robotics

A new high-quality dataset to train robotics algorithms on textile manipulation tasks

Many industrial processes and household tasks currently completed by humans entail the manipulation of textiles, including clothes, sheets, towels, cloths and other fabric-based objects. Most robotic systems developed so ...

Robotics

Morphing robot turns challenging terrain to its advantage

From mountain goats that run up near-vertical rock faces to armadillos that roll into a protective ball, animals have evolved to adapt effortlessly to changes in their environment. In contrast, when an autonomous robot is ...

Robotics

Robots learn how to move by watching themselves

By watching their own motions with a camera, robots can teach themselves about the structure of their own bodies and how they move, a new study by researchers at Columbia Engineering now reveals. Equipped with this knowledge, ...

Robotics

Low-cost drone system aids indoor search and rescue missions

Indoor search and rescue operations are some of the most dangerous tasks that law enforcement and first responders must face, but drone technology has revolutionized how they approach these intense situations, according to ...

Robotics

Turning robotic ensembles into smart materials that mimic life

Researchers have engineered groups of robots that behave as smart materials with tunable shape and strength, mimicking living systems. "We've figured out a way for robots to behave more like a material," said Matthew Devlin, ...

Robotics

A robust and adaptive controller for ballbots

The ballbot is a unique kind of robot with great mobility and possesses the ability to go in all directions. Obviously, controlling such a robotic device must be tricky. Indeed, ballbot systems pose unique challenges, particularly ...

Robotics

Leafbot: A soft robot that conquers challenging terrains

Soft robotics is an emerging field in the robotic world with promising adaptability in navigating unstructured environments. Where traditional robots struggle with unpredictable terrains, soft robots are advancing in their ...

Robotics

Robot acrobatics: Mammal tails offer surprising design insights

While exploring how best to design robots that use tails to reorient their bodies in midair, a team of researchers at the University of Michigan and University of California San Diego found that mammals had already figured ...

Robotics

Engineers help multirobot systems stay in the safety zone

Drone shows are an increasingly popular form of large-scale light display. These shows incorporate hundreds to thousands of airborne bots, each programmed to fly in paths that together form intricate shapes and patterns across ...