Robotics

Urban swarms for autonomous waste management

Researchers at MIT Media Lab, the University of Pisa, and Université Libre de Bruxelles have recently explored the feasibility of using swarm robotic systems for autonomous waste management. Their approach, outlined in a ...

Engineering

Novel 3-D printing technique yields high-performance composites

Nature has produced exquisite composite materials—wood, bone, teeth, and shells, for example—that combine light weight and density with desirable mechanical properties such as stiffness, strength and damage tolerance.

Engineering

How to design materials with reprogrammable shape and function

Metamaterials—materials whose function is determined by structure, not composition—have been designed to bend light and sound, transform from soft to stiff, and even dampen seismic waves from earthquakes. But each of ...

Robotics

Mimicking biological movements with soft robots

Designing a soft robot to move organically—to bend like a finger or twist like a wrist—has always been a process of trial and error. Now, researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied ...

Robotics

No batteries required: The first autonomous, entirely soft robot

A team of Harvard University researchers with expertise in 3D printing, mechanical engineering, and microfluidics has demonstrated the first autonomous, untethered, entirely soft robot. This small, 3D-printed robot—nicknamed ...

Robotics

The first walking robot that moves without GPS

Desert ants are extraordinary solitary navigators. Researchers at CNRS and Aix-Marseille University, in the Institut des Sciences du Mouvement—Étienne Jules Marey (ISM), were inspired by ants as they designed AntBot, the ...

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