35 stories
That old phone gathering dust in a drawer could have a second life far more entertaining than being a paperweight. UCLA researchers have created PhoneBot, a little humanoid that puts your smartphone to work as the brains of a walking robot companion.Continue ReadingCategory: Robotics,…
Biomimicry involves borrowing ideas from nature to solve engineering problems. This is what one of the research teams at New York University's Tandon School of Engineering specializes in.
If you've already designed a soft-bodied robot, it kind of defeats the purpose if you just go and stick a rigid motor inside of it. That's why Swiss scientists have created a motor that takes the form of a thin, flexible fiber.Continue ReadingCategory: Robotics, EngineeringTags: EPFL, Soft…
Agilink, a spin-off of Chinese robotics giant AgiBot, asked Fu Xianghong, a master of traditional Suzhou embroidery, to train its OmniHand 3 Ultra. The synthetic hand has learned to split silk strands, thread a needle, stretch fabric across a frame, and stitch, following a craft with more than…
An MIT robot powered by a single layer of living muscle cells swam through a watery maze, following a light held in a researcher’s hand. It is slow, tiny and nowhere near ready for the open ocean, but its thin design could point toward softer, cheaper swimming machines.Continue ReadingCategory:…
Robots – that is, self-guided mechanisms interacting with or changing their environments – exist in the popular imagination as large, blocky, metallic beings like R2D2 or TARS from Interstellar.
A robotic suit that lets someone with a spinal-cord injury stand up, look a friend in the eye, or stir a pot on the stove without anyone's help just cleared its biggest hurdle.
If you think that cockroaches are creepy and useless, we can prove you wrong. Well, at least the “useless” part.Continue ReadingCategory: Robotics, EngineeringTags: University of Queensland, Cyborg, Insect, Rescue, Disasters
Few things make the career jump from regional cuisine delicacy to robotics actuator. Yet, in research vaguely reminiscent of RoboCop, scientists have used skeletal muscle from a literal frog leg as an actuator to control a tiny robotic manta ray.Continue ReadingCategory: Robotics, EngineeringTags:…
Nature is undoubtedly the smartest engineer. Scientists have borrowed ideas from armadillos, elephants and birds to build robots capable of doing things that conventional man-made machines struggle with.
This cute little robot duck isn't actually a toy. It's actually a platform for budding roboticists to train on and develop skills. But heck, this might be the most fun design for a hackable machine we've seen yet.Continue ReadingCategory: Robotics, EngineeringTags: Robot, Artificial Intelligence
Today, you can buy almost anything with a few clicks on your phone. Online shopping has created millions of small deliveries, and a lot of them could be handled more efficiently if humans had a little mechanical help.
Are household humanoid robots getting cheaper already? We've only just begun seeing companies start to make promises and accept pre-orders for machines that can do your laundry and tidy up the living room.
Watching skilled excavator operators work is almost hypnotic. They make it look so easy that the machine seems to move like an extension of the operator's own arm.
You don’t have to watch Kevin Costner’s Waterworld to know that for much of the world, the future will be increasingly flooded. As climate chaos causes oceans to swallow coastlands, and as surging water displaces and devastates communities, social survival will demand that people find ways to live…
The US is banning the sale of robots made outside the country. That includes all the cool ones we've covered out of China, which can dance, provide companionship to seniors, fight fires, and carry loads over rocky terrain.Continue ReadingCategory: Robotics, EngineeringTags: Humanoid, Robots,…
Why pay to design and mass-produce a four-wheeled autonomous security robot, when you can make a less costly one with just one wheel? That's the thinking behind the 1Rollo, a monowheel-bot that could soon be patrolling near you.Continue ReadingCategory: Robotics, EngineeringTags: Self Balancing…
Evolution has already found solutions to lots of problems, so engineers more often borrow ideas from nature instead of reinventing the wheel. We’ve previously seen robots that can curl up like armadillos to protect themselves, and now researchers have developed yet another soft robotic gripper that…
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