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Lily the barn owl reveals how birds fly in gusty winds
University of Bristol
26 Oct 2020
Scientists from the University of Bristol and the Royal Veterinary College have discovered how birds are able to fly in gusty conditions – findings that could inform the development of bio-inspired ...
International conference on intelligent robots and systems (IROS)
Lucy Smith and AIhub
23 Oct 2020
This Sunday sees the start of the 2020 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS). This year the event is online and free for anyone to attend. Content will be availabl...
Electronic design tool morphs interactive objects
MIT News
23 Oct 2020
By Rachel Gordon
We’ve come a long way since the first 3D-printed item came to us by way of an eye wash cup, to now being able to rapidly fabricate things like car parts, musical instruments, and...
Robot swarms follow instructions to create art
Frontiers Journals & Blog
18 Oct 2020
By Conn Hastings, science writer
Controlling a swarm of robots to paint a picture sounds like a difficult task. However, a new technique allows an artist to do just that, without worrying about pro...
30 women in robotics you need to know about – 2020
Women In Robotics
13 Oct 2020
It’s Ada Lovelace Day and once again we’re delighted to introduce you to “30 women in robotics you need to know about”! From 13 year old Avye Couloute to Bala Krishnamurthy who worked alongsid...
Plan2Explore: Active model-building for self-supervised visual reinforcement learning
BAIR Blog
06 Oct 2020
By Oleh Rybkin, Danijar Hafner and Deepak Pathak[latexpage]
To operate successfully in unstructured open-world environments, autonomous intelligent agents need to solve many different tasks and lea...
Wearable technologies to make rehab more precise
Wyss Institute
04 Oct 2020
By Tim Sullivan / Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital Communications
A group based out of the Spaulding Motion Analysis Lab at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital published “Enabling Precision Rehabi...
AWAC: Accelerating online reinforcement learning with offline datasets
BAIR Blog
30 Sep 2020
By Ashvin Nair and Abhishek Gupta
Robots trained with reinforcement learning (RL) have the potential to be used across a huge variety of challenging real world problems. To apply RL to a new problem...
Can RL from pixels be as efficient as RL from state?
BAIR Blog
16 Sep 2020
By Misha Laskin, Aravind Srinivas, Kimin Lee, Adam Stooke, Lerrel Pinto, Pieter Abbeel
A remarkable characteristic of human intelligence is our ability to learn tasks quickly. Most humans can learn...
Cutting surgical robots down to size
Wyss Institute
26 Aug 2020
By Lindsay Brownell
Minimally invasive laparoscopic surgery, in which a surgeon uses tools and a tiny camera inserted into small incisions to perform operations, has made surgical procedures safer fo...
Data systems that learn to be better
MIT News
12 Aug 2020
By Adam Conner-Simons
Big data has gotten really, really big: By 2025, all the world’s data will add up to an estimated 175 trillion gigabytes. For a visual, if you stored that amount of data on DV...
Soft robotics actuators heal themselves
Andra Keay
28 Jul 2020
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Repeated activity wears on soft robotic actuators, but these machines' moving parts need to be reliable and easily fixed. Now a team of researchers has a biosynthetic polymer,...
Exploring the DARPA SubTerranean Challenge
Silicon Valley Robotics
27 Jul 2020
The DARPA Subterranean (SubT) Challenge aims to develop innovative technologies that would augment operations underground. On July 20, Dr Timothy Chung, the DARPA SubTChallenge Program Manager, joined...
OmniTact: a multi-directional high-resolution touch sensor
BAIR Blog
22 Jul 2020
By Akhil Padmanabha and Frederik Ebert
Touch has been shown to be important for dexterous manipulation in robotics. Recently, the GelSight sensor has caught significant interest for learning-based ...
RSS 2020 – all the papers and videos!
Silicon Valley Robotics
18 Jul 2020
RSS 2020 was held virtually this year, from the RSS Pioneers Workshop on July 11 to the Paper Awards and Farewell on July 16. Many talks are now available online, including 103 accepted papers, each p...
Letting robots manipulate cables
MIT News
15 Jul 2020
For humans, it can be challenging to manipulate thin flexible objects like ropes, wires, or cables. But if these problems are hard for humans, they are nearly impossible for robots. As a cable slides ...
#ICRA2020 workshops on robotics and learning
Lucy Smith and AIhub
15 Jul 2020
This year the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) is being run as a virtual event. One interesting feature of this conference is that it has been extended to run from 31 May to...
Robotics for Infectious Diseases Organization and other resources
Andra Keay
27 Jun 2020
In times of crisis, we all want to know where the robots are! And young roboticists just starting their careers, or simply thinking about robotics as a career, ask us ‘How can robotics help?’ and ...
Next-generation cockroach-inspired robot is small but mighty
Wyss Institute
24 Jun 2020
By Leah Burrows
This itsy-bitsy robot can’t climb up the waterspout yet but it can run, jump, carry heavy payloads and turn on a dime. Dubbed HAMR-JR, this microrobot developed by researchers at...
Drones learn acrobatics by themselves
NCCR Robotics
24 Jun 2020
Researchers from NCCR Robotics at the University of Zurich and Intel developed an algorithm that pushes autonomous drones to their physical limit....
Updated: All the #ICRA2020 plenary and keynote videos
Sabine Hauert
24 Jun 2020
ICRA 2020, one of the main international robotics conferences, is happening online this year due to COVID-19. That means there is loads of free content you can view from home. It's a great way to see ...
Why robotics startups fail!
Andra Keay
24 Jun 2020
What are the main reasons that robotics companies and startups fail? Is it the technology or is it the business? Fresh Consulting analyzed significant industry case studies from Rethink Robotics to ...
Silicon Valley Bank reports on ‘The Future of Robotics’
Silicon Valley Robotics
31 May 2020
You know robotics has ‘made it’ when Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) is reporting on it. Just five years ago, SVB barely had a hardware division, let alone a robotics and frontier tech team. This report...
ICRA 2020 launches with plenary panel ‘COVID-19: How Roboticists Can Help’
Silicon Valley Robotics
30 May 2020
ICRA is the largest robotics meeting in the world and is the flagship conference of the IEEE Robotics & Automation Society. It is thus our honor and pleasure to welcome you to this edition, alth...
RAC ‘Emerging Trends in Retail Robotics’ report released
Silicon Valley Robotics
30 May 2020
Robots are increasingly being deployed in retail environments. The reasons for this include: to relieve staff from the performance of repetitive and mundane tasks; to reallocate staff to more value-ad...
Open Problems for Robots in Surgery and Healthcare
Silicon Valley Robotics
15 May 2020
* Please register at:https://robotsinsurgeryandhealthcare.eventbrite.com
The COVID-19 pandemic is increasing global demand for robots that can assist in surgery and healthcare. This sympos...
From SLAM to Spatial AI
Silicon Valley Robotics
12 May 2020
You can watch this seminar here at 1PM EST (10AM PST) on May 15th.
Andrew Davison (Imperial College London)
Abstract: To enable the next generation of smart robots and devices which can truly ...
Audience Choice HRI 2020 Demo
Silicon Valley Robotics
10 May 2020
Welcome to the voting for the Audience Choice Demo from HRI 2020 (voting closed on May 14 11:59PM BST). Each of these demos showcases an aspect of Human-Robot Interaction research, and alongside “Be...
Study finds stronger links between automation and inequality
MIT News
06 May 2020
By Peter Dizikes
This is part 3 of a three-part series examining the effects of robots and automation on employment, based on new research from economist and Institute Professor Daron Acemoglu. ...
Robots help some firms, even while workers across industries struggle
MIT News
06 May 2020
This is part 2 of a three-part series examining the effects of robots and automation on employment, based on new research from economist and Institute Professor Daron Acemoglu. ...
How many jobs do robots really replace?
MIT News
06 May 2020
By Peter Dizikes
This is part 1 of a three-part series examining the effects of robots and automation on employment, based on new research from economist and Institute Professor Daron Acemoglu. ...
Unsupervised meta-learning: learning to learn without supervision
BAIR Blog
06 May 2020
By Benjamin Eysenbach and Abhishek Gupta This post is cross-listed on the CMU ML blog. The history of machine learning has largely been a story of increasing abstraction. In the dawn of ML, research...
Where are the robots when you need them!
Silicon Valley Robotics
27 Apr 2020
Looking at the Open Source COVID-19 Medical Supplies production tally of handcrafted masks and faceshields, we’re trying to answer that question in our weekly discussions about ‘COVID-19, robots a...
Can robots make food service safer for workers?
Silicon Valley Robotics
20 Apr 2020
Health care workers are not the only unwilling essential services frontline workers at increased risk of COVID-19. According to the Washington Post on April 12, “At least 41 grocery workers have die...
HRI 2020 Keynote: Stephanie Dinkins
Silicon Valley Robotics
18 Apr 2020
Community, craft, and the vernacular in artificially intelligent systems take the position that everyone participating in society is an expert in our experiences within the community infrastructures, ...
