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Robots with sticky feet can climb up, down, and all around
Wyss Institute
21 Dec 2018
By Lindsay Brownell
Jet engines can have up to 25,000 individual parts, making regular maintenance a tedious task that can take over a month per engine. Many components are located deep inside the ...
Growing bio-inspired shapes with a 300-robot swarm
Sabine Hauert
19 Dec 2018
Work by I. Slavkov, D. Carrillo-Zapata, N. Carranza, X. Diego, F. Jansson, J. Kaandorp, S. Hauert, J. Sharpe
Our work published today in Science Robotics describes how we grow fully self-organised ...
Call for robot holiday videos 2018
Robohub Editors
16 Dec 2018
That's right! You better not run, you better not hide, you better watch out for brand new robot holiday videos on Robohub! Drop your submissions down our chimney at sabine.hauert@robohub.org and shar...
Robot makes world-first baby coral delivery to Great Barrier Reef
QUT
16 Dec 2018
In a world first, an undersea robot has dispersed microscopic baby corals (coral larvae) to help scientists working to repopulate parts of the Great Barrier Reef during this year’s mass coral spawni...
A new drone can change its shape to fly through a narrow gap
NCCR Robotics
16 Dec 2018
A research team from the University of Zurich and EPFL has developed a new drone that can retract its propeller arms in flight and make itself small to fit through narrow gaps and holes. This is p...
Drones and satellite imaging to make forest protection pay
Horizon Magazine
16 Dec 2018
by Steve Gillman
Every year 7 million hectares of forest are cut down, chipping away at the 485 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) stored in trees around the world, but low-cost drones and new satell...
3Q: Aleksander Madry on building trustworthy artificial intelligence
MIT News
16 Dec 2018
By Kim Martineau
Machine learning algorithms now underlie much of the software we use, helping to personalize our news feeds and finish our thoughts before we’re done typing. But as artificial inte...
Soft actor critic – Deep reinforcement learning with real-world robots
BAIR Blog
16 Dec 2018
By Tuomas Haarnoja, Vitchyr Pong, Kristian Hartikainen, Aurick Zhou, Murtaza Dalal, and Sergey Levine
We are announcing the release of our state-of-the-art off-policy model-free reinforcement learnin...
Elowan: A plant-robot hybrid
MIT Media Lab
09 Dec 2018
Elowan is a cybernetic lifeform, a plant in direct dialogue with a machine. Using its own internal electrical signals, the plant is interfaced with a robotic extension that drives it toward light.
...
Inside “The Laughing Room”
MIT News
09 Dec 2018
By Brigham Fay
“The Laughing Room,” an interactive art installation by author, illustrator, and MIT graduate student Jonathan "Jonny" Sun, looks like a typical living room: couches, armchair...
Visual model-based reinforcement learning as a path towards generalist robots
BAIR Blog
04 Dec 2018
By Chelsea Finn∗, Frederik Ebert∗, Sudeep Dasari, Annie Xie, Alex Lee, and Sergey Levine
With very little explicit supervision and feedback, humans are able to learn a wide range of motor skills ...
Reproducing paintings that make an impression
MIT News
02 Dec 2018
By Rachel Gordon
The empty frames hanging inside the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum serve as a tangible reminder of the world’s biggest unsolved art heist. While the original masterpieces may...
Q&A with Cecilia Laschi – The Robotics Flagship
Sabine Hauert
25 Nov 2018
Why is a Robotics Flagship needed?
Robotics is a solid technological field, with important market opportunities. Europe contributed significantly to the growth of knowledge in this field and it is co...
European Robotics Week 2018 celebrated with 1200 events in over 30 countries
SPARC
25 Nov 2018
The European Robotics Week (ERW) is achieving a major success with around 1200 interactive robotics related events across Europe, showing how robots will impact the way we work, live, and learn both n...
Teaching robotics with ROS
Ricardo Téllez
24 Nov 2018
A couple of months ago I interviewed Joel Esposito about the state of robotics education for the ROS Developers Podcast #21. On that podcast, Joel talks about his research on how robotics is taug...
Using electricity and water, a new kind of motor can slide microrobots into motion
MIT News
19 Nov 2018
Look around and you'll likely see something that runs on an electric motor. Powerful and efficient, they keep much of our world moving, everything from our computers to refrigerators to the automatic ...
AdaSearch: A successive elimination approach to adaptive search
BAIR Blog
14 Nov 2018
By Esther Rolf∗, David Fridovich-Keil∗, and Max Simchowitz
https://youtu.be/a4SPB3VugFI
In many tasks in machine learning, it is common to want to answer questions given fixed, pre-collected...
Robotics Flagship: What the community thinks
Sabine Hauert
10 Nov 2018
In February we asked for input from the robotics community regarding a potential Robotics Flagship, a pan European interdisciplinary effort with 1B EUR in funding, if successful! The goal of the flags...
Robots in Depth with Richard Voyles
Robots in Depth
09 Nov 2018
In this episode of Robots in Depth, Per Sjöborg speaks with Richard Voyles about rescue robotics and advising politicians about robotics....
ANYmal robot tested on offshore platform
Péter Fankhauser
04 Nov 2018
A crucial task for energy providers is the reliable and safe operation of their plants, especially when producing energy offshore. Autonomous mobile robots are able to offer comprehensive support thro...
Fleets of drones could aid searches for lost hikers
MIT News
04 Nov 2018
By Rob Matheson
Finding lost hikers in forests can be a difficult and lengthy process, as helicopters and drones can’t get a glimpse through the thick tree canopy. Recently, it’s been proposed ...
Machines that learn language more like kids do
MIT News
04 Nov 2018
By Rob Matheson
Children learn language by observing their environment, listening to the people around them, and connecting the dots between what they see and hear. Among other things, this helps chi...
Robots in Depth with Stefano Stramigioli
Robots in Depth
04 Nov 2018
In this episode of Robots in Depth, Per Sjöborg speaks with Stefano Stramigioli about the Robotics and Mechatronics lab he leads at University of Twente. The lab focuses on inspection and maintenance...
Small flying robots able to pull objects up to 40 times their weight
NCCR Robotics
04 Nov 2018
Researchers from EPFL and Stanford have developed small drones that can land and then move objects that are 40 times their weight, with the help of powerful winches, gecko adhesives and microspines....
Two new robots for the nursing sector
Fraunhofer IPA
30 Oct 2018
As part of the “SeRoDi” project (“Service Robotics for Personal Services”), Fraunhofer IPA collaborated with other research and application partners to develop new service robotics solutions f...
Drilling down on depth sensing and deep learning
BAIR Blog
24 Oct 2018
By Daniel Seita, Jeff Mahler, Mike Danielczuk, Matthew Matl, and Ken Goldberg
This post explores two independent innovations and the potential for combining them in robotics. Two years before the Ale...
Robots in Depth with Sebastian Weisenburger
Robots in Depth
24 Oct 2018
In this episode of Robots in Depth, Per Sjöborg speaks Sebastian Weisenburger about how ECHORD++ works, with application-oriented research bridging academia, industry and end users to bring robots to...
How to mass produce cell-sized robots
MIT News
24 Oct 2018
By David L. Chandler
Tiny robots no bigger than a cell could be mass-produced using a new method developed by researchers at MIT. The microscopic devices, which the team calls “syncells” (short f...
How should autonomous vehicles be programmed?
MIT News
24 Oct 2018
By Peter Dizikes
A massive new survey developed by MIT researchers reveals some distinct global preferences concerning the ethics of autonomous vehicles, as well as some regional variations in those ...
Join the World MoveIt! Day code sprint on Oct 25 2018
Silicon Valley Robotics
20 Oct 2018
World MoveIt! Day is an international hackathon to improve the MoveIt! code base, documentation, and community. We hope to close as many pull requests and issues as possible and explore new areas of f...
Robots in Depth with Nicola Tomatis
Robots in Depth
19 Oct 2018
In this episode of Robots in Depth, Per Sjöborg speaks with Nicola Tomatis about his long road into robotics and how BlueBotics handles indoor navigation and integrates it in automated guided vehicle...
Models of dinosaur movement could help us build stronger robots and buildings
Horizon Magazine
19 Oct 2018
By Sandrine Ceurstemont
From about 245 to 66 million years ago, dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Although well-preserved skeletons give us a good idea of what they looked like, the way their limbs worke...
A step toward personalized, automated smart homes
MIT News
18 Oct 2018
By Rob Matheson
Developing automated systems that track occupants and self-adapt to their preferences is a major next step for the future of smart homes. When you walk into a room, for instance, a...
What’s the legacy of Rethink Robotics?
Ilian Bonev
18 Oct 2018
With the recent demise of Rethink Robotics, there were dozens of testimonials that the company revolutionized industrial robotics and kickstarted the collaborative robotics trend. There is no doubt th...
Learning acrobatics by watching YouTube
BAIR Blog
18 Oct 2018
By Xue Bin (Jason) Peng and Angjoo Kanazawa
Whether it’s everyday tasks like washing our hands or stunning feats of acrobatic prowess, humans are able to learn an incredible array of skills by wa...
25 women in robotics you need to know about – 2018
From driving rovers on Mars to improving farm automation for Indian women, once again we’re bringing you a list of 25 amazing women in robotics! These women cover all aspects of the robotics industr...
