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Articles
Robots dress humans without the full picture
MIT News
13 Apr 2022
MIT researchers design a robot that has a trick or two up its sleeve.
Touchy subject: 3D printed fingertip ‘feels’ like human skin
University of Bristol
07 Apr 2022
A highly sensitive, 3D-printed fingertip could help robots become more dexterous and improve the performance of prosthetic hands by giving them an in-built sense of touch.
Exoskeletons with personalize-your-own settings
Michigan Robotics
04 Apr 2022
Users who could adjust the timing, torque of an ankle exoskeleton typically found comfortable settings in under two minutes.
BirdBot is energy-efficient thanks to nature as a model
Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems
19 Mar 2022
A team of scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and the University of California, Irvine constructed a robot leg that, like its natural model, is very energy efficient. BirdBot benefits from a foot-leg coupling through a network of muscles and tendons that extends across multiple joints. In this way, BirdBot needs fewer motors than previous legged robots and could, theoretically, scale to large size.
Seamless transitions between autonomous robot capabilities and human intervention in construction robotics
Silicon Valley Robotics and Andra Keay
15 Mar 2022
Congratulations to the winners of the best paper award of the International Association for Automation and Robotics in Construction 2021! This paper presents two human-robot collaboration solutions for welding and joint sealing through the use of a haptic device.
Robotic cubes shapeshift in outer space
MIT News
25 Feb 2022
Self-reconfiguring ElectroVoxels use embedded electromagnets to test applications for space exploration.
Happy Birthday Nao!
In our paper ‘10 Years of Human-NAO Interaction Research: A Scoping Review’, we present an overview of the evolution of NAO’s technical capabilities. We also present the main results from a scoping review of the human-robot interaction research literature in which NAO was used.
Bristol scientists develop insect-sized flying robots with flapping wings
University of Bristol
03 Feb 2022
A new drive system for flapping wing autonomous robots has been developed by a University of Bristol team, using a new method of electromechanical zipping that does away with the need for conventional motors and gears.
How robots learn to hike
ETH Zurich
20 Jan 2022
A new control approach that enables a legged robot, called ANYmal, to move quickly and robustly over difficult terrain.
Robot reinforcement learning: safety in real-world applications
How can we make a robot learn in the real world while ensuring safety? In this post, best paper award finalists at CoRL explain all.
Giving bug-like bots a boost
MIT News
17 Dec 2021
A new fabrication technique produces low-voltage, power-dense artificial muscles that improve the performance of flying microrobots.
Team builds first living robots that can reproduce
Wyss Institute
02 Dec 2021
AI-designed Xenobots reveal entirely new form of biological self-replication—promising for regenerative medicine.
Finding inspiration in starfish larva
ETH Zurich
17 Nov 2021
Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a tiny robot that mimics the movement of a starfish larva. It is driven by sound waves and equipped with tiny hairs that direct the fluid around it, just like its natural model. In the future, such microswimmers could deliver drugs to diseased cells with pinpoint accuracy.
RECON: Learning to explore the real world with a ground robot
BAIR Blog
09 Nov 2021
RECON provides a robust way to using past experience to accelerate learning in a new environment through the combination of goal sampling and topological memory.
Making RL tractable by learning more informative reward functions: example-based control, meta-learning, and normalized maximum likelihood
BAIR Blog
30 Oct 2021
In our recent work, we design a reward specification technique that naturally incentivizes exploration and enables agents to explore environments in a directed way.
IEEE 17th International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering paper awards (with videos)
Daniel Carrillo-Zapata and IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS)
27 Oct 2021
The IEEE International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (CASE) is the flagship automation conference of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society and constitutes the primary forum for c...
Flying high-speed drones into the unknown with AI
NCCR Robotics
08 Oct 2021
When it comes to exploring complex and unknown environments such as forests, buildings or caves, drones are hard to beat. They are fast, agile and small, and they can carry sensors and payloads virtua...
What can I do here? Learning new skills by imagining visual affordances
BAIR Blog
27 Sep 2021
How do humans become so skillful? Well, initially we are not, but from infancy, we discover and practice increasingly complex skills through self-supervised play. But this play is not random - the chi...
When humans play in competition with a humanoid robot, they delay their decisions when the robot looks at them
Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia
06 Sep 2021
Gaze is an extremely powerful and important signal during human-human communication and interaction, conveying intentions and informing about other’s decisions. What happens when a robot and a human...
Swimming robot gives fresh insight into locomotion and neuroscience
NCCR Robotics
12 Aug 2021
Scientists at the Biorobotics Laboratory (BioRob) in EPFL’s School of Engineering are developing innovative robots in order to study locomotion in animals and, ultimately, gain a better understandin...
We used peanuts and a climbing wall to learn how squirrels judge their leaps so successfully – and how their skills could inspire more nimble robots
How do they stick their landings? Alex Turton via Getty ImagesTree squirrels are the Olympic divers of the rodent world, leaping gracefully among branches and structures high above the ground. And as ...
A robotic cat can teach us how real animals move
Frontiers Journals & Blog
03 Aug 2021
By Mischa Dijkstra, Frontiers science writer / Toyoaki Tanikawa, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Osaka University
In the young discipline of robotics-inspired biology, robots replace experime...
New algorithm flies drones faster than human racing pilots
NCCR Robotics
22 Jul 2021
To be useful, drones need to be quick. Because of their limited battery life they must complete whatever task they have – searching for survivors on a disaster site, inspecting a building, deliverin...
What is the best simulation tool for robotics?
Silicon Valley Robotics
20 Jul 2021
What is the best simulation tool for robotics? This is a hard question to answer because many people (or their companies) specialize in one tool or another. Some simulators are better at one aspect of...
Face masks that can diagnose COVID-19
Wyss Institute
29 Jun 2021
By Lindsay Brownell
Most people associate the term “wearable” with a fitness tracker, smartwatch, or wireless earbuds. But what if cutting-edge biotechnology were integrated into your clothing,...
Expectations and perceptions of healthcare professionals for robot deployment in hospital environments during the COVID-19 pandemic
The recent outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome, caused by coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), also referred to as COVID-19, has spread globally in an unprecedented way. In response, the efforts ...
Slender robotic finger senses buried items
MIT News
27 May 2021
By Daniel Ackerman
Over the years, robots have gotten quite good at identifying objects — as long as they’re out in the open.
Discerning buried items in granular material like sand is a ...
Helping drone swarms avoid obstacles without hitting each other
EPFL
20 May 2021
By Clara Marc
There is strength in numbers. That’s true not only for humans, but for drones too. By flying in a swarm, they can cover larger areas and collect a wider range of data, since each dr...
A robot that senses hidden objects
MIT News
03 Apr 2021
By Daniel Ackerman | MIT News Office
In recent years, robots have gained artificial vision, touch, and even smell. “Researchers have been giving robots human-like perception,” says MIT Associa...
Towards mapping unknown environments with a robot swarm
Mapping is an essential task in many robotics applications. A map is a representation of the environment generated from robots positions and sensors data. A map can be either used to navigate the robo...
System detects errors when medication is self-administered
MIT News
19 Mar 2021
From swallowing pills to injecting insulin, patients frequently administer their own medication. But they don’t always get it right. Improper adherence to doctors’ orders is commonplace, accountin...
Maximum Entropy RL (Provably) Solves Some Robust RL Problems
BAIR Blog
15 Mar 2021
By Ben Eysenbach
Nearly all real-world applications of reinforcement learning involve some degree of shift between the training environment and the testing environment. However, prior work has obse...
Self-supervised policy adaptation during deployment
BAIR Blog
26 Feb 2021
Our method learns a task in a fixed, simulated environment and quickly adapts
to new environments (e.g. the real world) solely from online interaction during
deployment.
The ability for hum...
Soft robots for ocean exploration and offshore operations: A perspective
Simona Aracri
06 Feb 2021
Most of the ocean is unknown. Yet we know that the most challenging environments on the planet reside in it. Understanding the ocean in its totality is a key component for the sustainable development ...
Wielding a laser beam deep inside the body
Wyss Institute
04 Feb 2021
A microrobotic opto-electro-mechanical device able to steer a laser beam with high speed and a large range of motion could enhance the possibilities of minimally invasive surgeries
By Benjamin Boet...
Robotic swarm swims like a school of fish
Wyss Institute
01 Feb 2021
By Leah Burrows / SEAS Communications
Schools of fish exhibit complex, synchronized behaviors that help them find food, migrate, and evade predators. No one fish or sub-group of fish coordinates th...
