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Articles
Robotic system offers hidden window into collective bee behavior
EPFL
03 Apr 2023
EPFL researchers have developed a temperature-modulating robotic system that can be seamlessly integrated into notoriously sensitive honeybee hives, providing both a never-before-seen view of honeybee behavior and a means to influence it.
Resilient bug-sized robots keep flying even after wing damage
MIT News
23 Mar 2023
New repair techniques enable microscale robots to recover flight performance after suffering severe damage to the artificial muscles that power their wings.
Mix-and-match kit could enable astronauts to build a menagerie of lunar exploration bots
MIT News
14 Mar 2023
Robotic parts could be assembled into nimble spider bots for exploring lava tubes or heavy-duty elephant bots for transporting solar panels.
A new bioinspired earthworm robot for future underground explorations
Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia
09 Mar 2023
The robotics prototype takes inspiration from earthworms. It is 45 cm long and weighs 605 grams and it is the first robot build by replicating the morphology and the functioning of real earthworms.
Custom, 3D-printed heart replicas look and pump just like the real thing
MIT News
23 Feb 2023
The soft robotic models are patient-specific and could help clinicians zero in on the best implant for an individual.
Fully autonomous real-world reinforcement learning with applications to mobile manipulation
BAIR Blog
22 Feb 2023
In this blog post, we will discuss ReLMM, a system that we developed that learns to clean up a room directly with a real robot via continual learning.
Engineers devise a modular system to produce efficient, scalable aquabots
MIT News
07 Feb 2023
The system’s simple repeating elements can assemble into swimming forms ranging from eel-like to wing-shaped.
Microelectronics give researchers a remote control for biological robots
Illinois News Bureau
05 Feb 2023
First, they walked. Then, they saw the light. Now, miniature biological robots have gained a new trick: remote control.
Special drone collects environmental DNA from trees
ETH Zurich
27 Jan 2023
Researchers at ETH Zurich and the Swiss Federal research institute WSL have developed a flying device that can land on tree branches to take samples. This opens up a new dimension for scientists previously reserved for biodiversity researchers.
Smart ‘Joey’ bots could soon swarm underground to clean and inspect our pipes
Frontiers Journals & Blog
06 Jan 2023
Researchers from the University of Leeds have developed the first mini-robot, called Joey, that can find its own way independently through networks of narrow pipes underground, to inspect any damage or leaks.
Soft robots gain new strength and make virtual reality gloves feel more real
Penn Engineering Today
16 Dec 2022
A team of Penn Engineers has devised a new electrostatically controlled clutch which enables a soft robotic hand to be able to hold 4 pounds – about the weight of a bag of apples – which is 40 times more than the hand could lift without the clutch.
Estimating manipulation intentions to ease teleoperation
Anna Belardinelli and AIhub
06 Dec 2022
Introducing an intention estimation model that relies on both gaze and motion features.
The Utah Bionic Leg: A motorized prosthetic for lower-limb amputees
Lenzi’s Utah Bionic Leg uses motors, processors, and advanced artificial intelligence that all work together to give amputees more power to walk, stand-up, sit-down, and ascend and descend stairs and ramps.
Study: Automation drives income inequality
MIT News
27 Nov 2022
New data suggest most of the growth in the wage gap since 1980 comes from automation displacing less-educated workers.
Flocks of assembler robots show potential for making larger structures
MIT News
25 Nov 2022
Researchers make progress toward groups of robots that could build almost anything, including buildings, vehicles, and even bigger robots.
Fighting tumours with magnetic bacteria
ETH Zurich
19 Nov 2022
Researchers at ETH Zurich are planning to use magnetic bacteria to fight cancerous tumours. They have now found a way for these microorganisms to effectively cross blood vessel walls and subsequently colonise a tumour.
Magnetic sensors track muscle length
MIT News
30 Oct 2022
Using a new technology, researchers hope to create better control systems for prosthetic limbs.
Big step towards tiny autonomous drones
Joost van de Loo
28 Oct 2022
A new study in Nature magazine describes how flying insects and drones know the difference between up and down.
Reprogrammable materials selectively self-assemble
MIT News
26 Oct 2022
Researchers create a method for magnetically programming materials to make cubes that are very picky about what they connect with, enabling more-scalable self-assembly.
New walking robot design could revolutionize how we build things in space
Frontiers Journals & Blog
22 Oct 2022
Researchers have designed a state-of-the-art walking robot that could revolutionize large construction projects in space. They tested the feasibility of the robot for the in-space assembly of a 25m Large Aperture Space Telescope.
A new type of material called a mechanical neural network can learn and change its physical properties to create adaptable, strong structures
The Conversation
20 Oct 2022
A new type of material can learn and improve its ability to deal with unexpected forces thanks to a unique lattice structure with connections of variable stiffness.
Breaking through the mucus barrier
MIT News
02 Oct 2022
A capsule that tunnels through mucus in the GI tract could be used to orally administer large protein drugs such as insulin.
MIT engineers build a battery-free, wireless underwater camera
MIT News
27 Sep 2022
The device could help scientists explore unknown regions of the ocean, track pollution, or monitor the effects of climate change.
MiGriBot: a miniature robot able to perform pick-and-place operations of sub-millimeter objects
FEMTO-ST Institute
06 Sep 2022
A research team has developed a miniature robot capable of manipulating micrometric objects at the speed of 720 pick-and-place operations per minute with about one micrometer accuracy.
Robot helps reveal how ants pass on knowledge
University of Bristol
24 Aug 2022
Scientists have developed a small robot to understand how ants teach one another.
Using reinforcement learning for control of direct ink writing
Institute of Science and Technology Austria and AIhub
20 Aug 2022
Improving the printing technique of viscous materials using reinforcement learning and numerical simulation.
Two hands are better than one
Tess Meier
01 Aug 2022
The HOPE hand is a hand orthosis with powered extension to better serve individuals who need assistance opening their hand, to provide them with improved capabilities to perform activities of daily living, and to help them re-gain their independence.
Cooperative cargo transportation by a swarm of molecular machines
Daniel Carrillo-Zapata
23 Jul 2022
Researchers showed it is possible to collectively transport molecular cargo by a swarm of artificial molecular robots responding to light.
Bees’ ‘waggle dance’ may revolutionize how robots talk to each other in disaster zones
Frontiers Journals & Blog
18 Jul 2022
A recent study presents a simple technique whereby robots view and interpret each other’s movements or a gesture from a human to communicate a geographical location.
Why do Policy Gradient Methods work so well in Cooperative MARL? Evidence from Policy Representation
BAIR Blog
16 Jul 2022
Some recent empirical studies demonstrate that with proper input representation and hyper-parameter tuning, multi-agent PG can achieve surprisingly strong performance compared to off-policy VD methods.
New imaging method makes tiny robots visible in the body
ETH Zurich
20 May 2022
Microrobots have the potential to revolutionize medicine. Researchers at the Max Planck ETH Centre for Learning Systems have now developed an imaging technique that for the first time recognises cell-sized microrobots individually and at high resolution in a living organism.
Designing societally beneficial Reinforcement Learning (RL) systems
BAIR Blog
15 May 2022
In this post, we aim to illustrate the different modalities harms can take when augmented with the temporal axis of RL. To combat these novel societal risks, we also propose a new kind of documentation for dynamic Machine Learning systems which aims to assess and monitor these risks both before and after deployment.
GelBot – A new 3D printing method to tackle sustainability in soft robots
Doctoral students have built a system to 3D print a biodegradable gel into complex shapes. They have printed finger-like robots that use intricate sensor networks to sense their own deformation and also objects in their surroundings.
How to compete with robots
EPFL
01 May 2022
Swiss roboticists and economists from EPFL and University of Lausanne developed a method for estimating the probability of jobs being automated by future intelligent robots and suggesting career transitions with lower risks and minimal retraining effort.
An easier way to teach robots new skills
MIT News
29 Apr 2022
Researchers have developed a technique that enables a robot to learn a new pick-and-place task with only a handful of human demonstrations.
A flexible way to grab items with feeling
MIT News
18 Apr 2022
MIT engineers Edward Adelson and Sandra Liu duo develop a robotic gripper with rich sensory capabilities.
