“Steaming, which is a very simple operation, is different whether you are doing it with, for example, a piece of fish, a big piece of potato, a small piece of potato, with rice,” said Mark Oleynik. “All of these are very different, believe me. You need different timing, different tools, to do it correctly. You […]
NYPD/Instagram The classic 1987 movie RoboCop is said to be set roughly 20 years from now, but it looks like 2021 will be the beginning of the era of robotic law enforcement. A growing number of police departments around the country are purchasing robots for police work, and as this behavior becomes normalized, major concerns […]
Media playback is unsupported on your device Scientists at the University of Liverpool have unveiled a robotic colleague that has been working non-stop in their lab throughout lockdown. The £100,000 programmable researcher learns from its results to refine its experiments. “It can work autonomously, so I can run experiments from home,” explained Benjamin Burger, one […]
Oh no, it’s time to mow the lawn again. If only a trusty robot sidekick could help do the work for you! The future is now because today everyone’s using robot lawnmowers, and they’re smarter and faster than you might think. We’re reviewing the best robot lawn mowers of 2020, along with their best features. […]
[embedded content] Killer robots are coming to a farm near you. Well, weed-killing robots, that is. Developed by autonomous farming robot startup FarmWise, these weed-killing machines have already removed weeds from more than 10 million plants. In the process, not only are they automating a job that, frankly, no one wants to do manually, but […]
(Cai lab/Advanced Functional Materials) August 15 at 4:22 PM When you’re reading, looking at a map or squinting toward the horizon, your eyes adjust themselves involuntarily and instantaneously, thanks to tiny muscles inside the crystalline lens that can bend it and change its shape. Like a camera coming into focus, this structure allows us to […]
From Aliens’ Caterpillar P-5000 Work Loader (that’s the “Power Loader” to you and I) through the Combat Jackets from Edge of Tomorrow to Tony Stark’s Iron Man armor, science fiction is full of cool assistive robot exosuits. But real life is catching up with sci-fi. With one-time imaginary concepts like delivery robots, self-driving cars, rockets […]
[embedded content] In West Lafayette, Indiana, the renowned ornithologist Xinyan Deng stretches out her hand to serve as a platform for a magnificent turquoise and dark green hummingbird. It hovers just above her palm, wings beating rapidly to keep it airborne, but otherwise remaining perfectly stationary. Although several types of bird can hover in this […]
The International Space Station (ISS) is about to take delivery of a couple of robotic “bees” that will help take care of routine chores and also participate in experiments conducted by controllers on the ground. Dubbed “Astrobee,” the compact, cube-shaped flying robot has been developed and built at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon […]
A team of researchers at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering believe they have become the first to create an AI-controlled robotic limb driven by animal-like tendons that can even be tripped up and then recover within the time of the next footfall, a task for which the robot was never explicitly programmed to do. […]
[embedded content] What’s scarier than a cheetah, one of nature’s most awesome big cats? A robot cheetah, of course. What’s scarier than a robot cheetah? A backflipping robot cheetah, created by the evidently fiendishly brilliant robotics geniuses over at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Clearly taking their cue from the example set by nearby Boston Dynamics’ […]
Siping Zheng It might sound like something out of a techno-thriller, but it’s not: Scientists in China really have developed an unmanned submarine that is designed to travel into potentially deadly typhoons and other extreme weather types and fire off weather-monitoring rockets. One of these “rocketsondes,” designed to perform weather analysis in situations that would […]
[embedded content] Nothing says it’s nearly Christmas quite like a 3D-printed robot hand busting out a festive classic on the piano. Fortunately, this year the tradition continues (or, let’s be honest, starts) courtesy of researchers from the U.K.’s University of Cambridge. Using a 3D printer, they have created a soft robot hand — attached to […]
[embedded content] Technology has given us all kinds of handy tools for helping us find our car in a busy parking lot. But what if our cars came to find us, rather than the other way around? No, we’re not talking about self-driving cars, but rather a new automated car parking and retrieval service that […]
Desperate for the loving touch of another human? A group of researchers in France have come up with the next best thing to ease your loneliness: a lifelike finger that attaches to your smartphone and strokes your hand. The not-at-all-creepy MobiLimb has joints that allow it to function like a real finger. Its creators — […]