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

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.