Robotics news

Robotics

Engineers teach a quadruped robot to climb standard ladders

A team of robotics engineers at ETH Zurich, Robotics Systems Lab, has modified an ANYbotics ANYMal quadruped robot to allow it to easily and effectively climb a standard ladder. The group has written a paper describing their ...

Robotics

Meet Plantolin, the tree-planting robot pangolin built by student

A robot pangolin designed to plant trees is the winner of the 2023 Natural Robotics Contest, which rewards robot designs inspired by nature. As the winning entry, the pangolin—dubbed "Plantolin"—has been brought to life ...

Robotics

Using Turing patterns to enhance soft pneumatic technology

According to a recent study in Scientific Reports, Turing patterns can be used to develop a new method for designing and producing fabric-based soft pneumatic actuators (FSPAs).

Robotics

LiDAR-based system allows unmanned aerial vehicle team to rapidly reconstruct environments

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, have proved to be highly effective systems for monitoring and exploring environments. These autonomous flying robots could also be used to create detailed maps and ...

Robotics

Q&A: Teaching robots to touch and interact like humans

Robots are widely used in the automotive industry and have started entering new application domains such as logistics in the last few years. However, current robots still face many limitations. They typically perform a single ...

Robotics

Team develops versatile knee exoskeletons for safer lifting

A set of knee exoskeletons, built with commercially available knee braces and drone motors at the University of Michigan, has been shown to help counteract fatigue in lifting and carrying tasks. They helped users maintain ...

Robotics

Teaching robots to use color in moving objects

Research at Michigan State University is focused on teaching robots to use colors to perceive, visualize, and interpret interactions when manipulating objects. A force-interpreting optical system is being developed so robots ...

Robotics

Versatile microscale robots can fold into 3D shapes and crawl

Cornell University researchers have created microscale robots less than 1 millimeter in size that are printed as a 2D hexagonal "metasheet," but with a jolt of electricity, morph into preprogrammed 3D shapes and crawl.

Robotics

The robots being readied to enter nuclear no-go zones

Robust, intelligent robots that react to their surroundings are being developed to work in situations that are too dangerous for humans, such as cleaning up Europe's decades-old radioactive waste or helping during a nuclear ...

Robotics

'Ambidextrous' robots could dramatically speed e-commerce

E-commerce continues to expand and achieved new levels during the recent holiday season. To rapidly fulfill the enormous volume and variety of orders, companies such as Amazon, Walmart, and Alibaba are investing heavily in ...

Robotics

Robots of the future: more R2D2 than C3PO

Researchers from Australia's national science agency, CSIRO, have offered a bold glimpse into what the robots of the future could look like. And it's nothing like C3PO, or a T-800 Terminator.

Robotics

Hyundai shows off walking car project

South Korean car maker Hyundai on Monday gave a look at work it is doing on a vehicle with robotic legs to let it walk or crawl over treacherous terrain.

Robotics

How game theory can bring humans and robots closer together

Researchers at the University of Sussex, Imperial College London and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have for the first time used game theory to enable robots to assist humans in a safe and versatile manner.

Robotics

Growing bio-inspired shapes with hundreds of tiny robots

Hundreds of small robots can work in a team to create biology-inspired shapes without an underlying master plan, purely based on local communication and movement. To achieve this, researchers from EMBL, CRG and Bristol Robotics ...

Robotics

3-D-printed robot hand plays the piano

Scientists have developed a 3-D-printed robotic hand which can play simple musical phrases on the piano by just moving its wrist. And while the robot is no virtuoso, it demonstrates just how challenging it is to replicate ...

Robotics

Robots with sticky feet can climb up, down, and all around

Jet engines can have up to 25,000 individual parts, making regular maintenance a tedious task that can take over a month per engine. Many components are located deep inside the engine and cannot be inspected without taking ...