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Articles

Octopus inspires new suction mechanism for robots

University of Bristol 18 Apr 2024

Suction cup grasping a stone - Image credit: Tianqi Yue The team, based at Bristol Robotics Laboratory, studied the structures of octopus biological suckers, which have superb adaptive s...

AI holidays 2023

AIhub and Lucy Smith 31 Dec 2023

Thanks to those that sent and suggested AI and robotics-themed holiday videos, images, and stories. Here’s a sample to get you into the spirit this season....

Faced with dwindling bee colonies, scientists are arming queens with robots and smart hives

The Conversation 31 Dec 2023

By Farshad Arvin, Martin Stefanec, and Tomas Krajnik Be it the news or the dwindling number of creatures hitting your windscreens, it will not have evaded you that the insect world in bad shape. ...

Using language to give robots a better grasp of an open-ended world

MIT News 06 Nov 2023

By blending 2D images with foundation models to build 3D feature fields, a new MIT method helps robots understand and manipulate nearby objects with open-ended language prompts.

AAAI Fall Symposium: Patrícia Alves-Oliveira on human-robot interaction design

AIhub and Lucy Smith 31 Oct 2023

We summarise the first keynote from the symposium on artificial intelligence for human-robot interaction.

Do humans get lazier when robots help with tasks?

Frontiers Journals & Blog 29 Oct 2023

Humans carrying out quality assurance tasks spotted fewer errors when they had been told that robots had already checked a piece, suggesting they relied on the robots and paid less attention to the work.

Goal representations for instruction following

BAIR Blog 22 Oct 2023

Natural language has the potential to be an easy-to-use interface for humans to specify arbitrary tasks, but it is difficult to train robots to follow language instructions.

New technique helps robots pack objects into a tight space

MIT News 17 Oct 2023

Researchers coaxed a family of generative AI models to work together to solve multistep robot manipulation problems.

Finger-shaped sensor enables more dexterous robots

MIT News 08 Oct 2023

MIT engineers develop a long, curved touch sensor that could enable a robot to grasp and manipulate objects in multiple ways.

Soft robotic tool provides new ‘eyes’ in endovascular surgery

Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems 23 Sep 2023

The magnetic device can help visualise and navigate complex and narrow spaces.

‘Brainless’ robot can navigate complex obstacles

NC Sate University 21 Sep 2023

Researchers who created a soft robot that could navigate simple mazes without human or computer direction have now built on that work, creating a “brainless” soft robot that can navigate more complex and dynamic environments.

Battery-free origami microfliers from UW researchers offer a new bio-inspired future of flying machines

The Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering 20 Sep 2023

Researchers at the University of Washington present battery-free microfliers that can change shape in mid-air to vary their dispersal distance.

High-tech microscope with ML software for detecting malaria in returning travellers

Frontiers Science News and AIhub 14 Sep 2023

Method not as accurate as human experts, but shows promise.

Fiber-infused ink enables 3D-printed heart muscle to beat

Wyss Institute 09 Sep 2023

The ink helps heart muscle cells align so that they can contract in coordination.

MIT engineers use kirigami to make ultrastrong, lightweight structures

MIT News 01 Sep 2023

Produced with techniques borrowed from Japanese paper-cutting, the strong metal lattices are lighter than cork and have customizable mechanical properties.

New dual-arm robot achieves bimanual tasks by learning from simulation

University of Bristol 29 Aug 2023

An innovative bimanual robot displays tactile sensitivity close to human-level dexterity using AI to inform its actions.

AI helps robots manipulate objects with their whole bodies

MIT News 27 Aug 2023

With a new technique, a robot can reason efficiently about moving objects using more than just its fingertips.

3D display could soon bring touch to the digital world

Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems 12 Aug 2023

A new, shape-shifting display can sense and respond to human touch.

Can charismatic robots help teams be more creative?

Frontiers Journals & Blog 09 Aug 2023

Scientists found that students given a task by a social robot with a voice programmed to be engaging and inspiring performed better and were more creative than students who received the task from an identical robot with a flat voice.

Enabling autonomous exploration

Carnegie Mellon University 30 Jul 2023

CMU-designed systems allow robots to explore on their own.

Pangolin the inspiration for medical robot

Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems 27 Jul 2023

Robot is made of metal and yet is soft and flexible.

Heat-resistant drone could scope out and map burning buildings and wildfires

Imperial College London 24 Jul 2023

Imperial College London and Empa researchers have built a drone that can withstand high enough temperatures to enter burning buildings.

Robot swarms neutralize harmful Byzantine robots using a blockchain-based token economy

Université Libre de Bruxelles 20 Jul 2023

In experiments conducted with both real and simulated robots, we show how blockchain technology enables a robot swarm to neutralize harmful robots without human intervention, thus enabling the deployment of autonomous and safe robot swarms.

Magnetic robots walk, crawl, and swim

MIT News 10 Jul 2023

New soft-bodied robots that can be controlled by a simple magnetic field are well suited to work in confined spaces.

Visual navigation to objects in real homes

Theophile Gervet 07 Jul 2023

We present a large-scale empirical study of semantic visual navigation methods comparing representative methods from classical, modular, and end-to-end learning approaches across six homes with no prior experience, maps, or instrumentation.

Why diversity and inclusion needs to be at the forefront of future AI

Frontiers Journals & Blog 01 Jul 2023

Inês Hipólito is a permanent lecturer of the philosophy of AI at Macquarie University, focusing on cognitive development and the interplay between augmented cognition (AI) and the sociocultural environment. As part of our Frontier Scientist series, Hipólito caught up with Frontiers to tell us about her career and research.

Robots with tact

Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg 20 Jun 2023

Mimicking principles of the nervous system could improve prosthetic hands.

Machine-learning method used for self-driving cars could improve lives of type-1 diabetes patients

University of Bristol 17 Jun 2023

The same type of machine learning methods used to pilot self-driving cars and beat top chess players could help type-1 diabetes sufferers keep their blood glucose levels in a safe range.

A step toward safe and reliable autopilots for flying

MIT News 14 Jun 2023

A new AI-based approach for controlling autonomous robots satisfies the often-conflicting goals of safety and stability.

Helping robots handle fluids

MIT News 27 May 2023

Researchers create a new simulation tool for robots to manipulate complex fluids in a step toward helping them more effortlessly assist with daily tasks.

Jellyfish-like robots could one day clean up the world’s oceans

Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems 17 May 2023

Roboticists have developed a jellyfish-inspired underwater robot with which they hope one day to collect waste from the bottom of the ocean. The almost noise-free prototype can trap objects underneath its body without physical contact, thereby enabling safe interactions in delicate environments such as coral reefs. Jellyfish-Bot could become an important tool for environmental remediation.

Biodegradable artificial muscles: going green in the field of soft robotics

Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems 09 May 2023

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems developed fully biodegradable, high-performance artificial muscles. Their research project marks another step towards green technology becoming a lasting trend in the field of soft robotics.

Scientists unveil plan to create biocomputers powered by human brain cells + interview with Prof Thomas Hartung (senior author of the paper)

Frontiers Journals & Blog 07 May 2023

Scientists unveil a revolutionary path to drive computing forward: organoid intelligence (OI), where lab-grown brain organoids serve as biological hardware.