Robotics news

Robotics

New microactuator driving system could give microdrones a jump-start

An innovative circuit design could enable miniature devices, such as microdrones and other microrobotics, to be powered for longer periods of time while staying lightweight and compact. Researchers from the University of ...

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

Machine learning transforms mini biohybrid ray design, doubling swimming efficiency

A new study shows an application of machine-learning directed optimization (ML-DO) that efficiently searches for high-performance design configurations in the context of biohybrid robots. Applying a machine learning approach, ...

Robotics

Biohybrid hand uses sushi-like rolls of lab-grown human muscle to move objects

A biohybrid hand which can move objects and do a scissor gesture has been built by a team at the University of Tokyo and Waseda University in Japan. The researchers used thin strings of lab-grown muscle tissue bundled into ...

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 ...

Robotics

Embodied AI reveals how robots and toddlers learn to understand

We humans excel at generalization. If you taught a toddler to identify the color red by showing her a red ball, a red truck and a red rose, she will most likely correctly identify the color of a tomato, even if it is the ...

Robotics

How drones are changing warfare

As part of the ongoing war in Ukraine, one night in late November, Russia sent a swarm of 188 drones to attack Ukrainian infrastructure like electrical utilities, as well as residential areas, according to news reports. Ukrainian ...

Robotics

Transforming how AI systems perceive human hands

Making Artificial Intelligence systems robustly perceive humans remains one of the most intricate challenges in computer vision. Among the most complex problems is reconstructing 3D models of human hands, a task with wide-ranging ...

Robotics

Robotic insects could someday aid in mechanical pollination

With a more efficient method for artificial pollination, farmers in the future could grow fruits and vegetables inside multilevel warehouses, boosting yields while mitigating some of agriculture's harmful impacts on the environment.