PRINCETON, N.J. — Scientists have taken a cue from nature’s fuzziest insects, creating a caterpillar-like robot that can bend and twist when navigating mazes. This new technology owes its flexibility to the art of origami, which influenced the design of this innovative soft robot. Soft robots are challenging models to…
Read MoreSwarm of tiny snail robots stick together to form new structures
Researchers have built a swarm of miniature, snail-inspired robots, minus all the mucus. Instead, a retractable suction cup works in tandem with the remote-controlled machine’s tank-like treads to maneuver across both difficult terrain and over each other. Biomimicry is nothing new within the field of robotics. But while many aquatic…
Read MoreBoston Dynamics gives Spot bot a furry makeover
Boston Dynamics may have relocated the bipedal Atlas to a nice farm upstate, but the company continues to let everyone know its four-legged line of Spot robots have a lot of life left in them. And after years of obvious dog-bot comparisons, Spot’s makers finally went ahead and commissioned a…
Read MoreWhy animals run faster than their robot doppelgängers… for now
Modern robotics is awash with human-made machines mimicking the animal world. From stadium-surveying robot dogs to daddy long-legs-inspired exploration bots and just about everything in-between, there’s no shortage of mechanized animal doppelgängers roaming the world. Advancements in AI systems, new synthetic materials, and 3D printing have greatly improved these machines’…
Read MoreDaddy long-legs-inspired robot could one day squirm through Martian caves
Robotic engineers are no stranger to turning to nature for inspiration. In recent years, birds, dogs, extinct sea creatures, and even humans themselves have all served as jumping off point for new mechanical designs. Now, researchers from Stanford are citing the Harvestman spider, better known as a daddy long-legs as…
Read MoreRIP Atlas, the world’s beefiest humanoid robot
Atlas, the hulking 330-pound acrobatic Boston Dynamics robot (that filled us with equal parts awe and horror) is officially going into retirement. The 11-year-old iconic bi-pedal giant will be replaced by a much lighter, all electric successor. The transition marks an end of an era for Boston Dynamics as consumer…
Read MoreStartup pitches a paintball-armed, AI-powered home security camera
It’s a bold pitch for homeowners: What if you let a small tech startup’s crowdfunded AI surveillance system dispense vigilante justice for you? A Slovenia-based company called OZ-IT recently announced PaintCam Eve, a line of autonomous property monitoring devices that will utilize motion detection and facial recognition to guard against…
Read MoreWatch a tripod robot test its asteroid leaping skills
Before astronauts leave Earth’s gravity for days, weeks, or even months at a time, they practice aboard NASA’s famous parabolic flights. During these intense rides in modified passenger jets, trainees experience a series of stomach-churning ups and downs as the aircraft’s steep up-and-down movements create zero-g environments. Recently, however, a…
Read MoreWatch two tiny, AI-powered robots play soccer
Google DeepMind is now able to train tiny, off-the-shelf robots to square off on the soccer field. In a new paper published today in Science Robotics, researchers detail their recent efforts to adapt a machine learning subset known as deep reinforcement learning (deep RL) to teach bipedal bots a simplified…
Read MoreApple’s ‘next big thing’ could be a robot butler
Apple’s vision for the future could involve an autonomous robot butler. That’s according to a new Bloomberg report which claims the iPhone maker is reallocating resources from its now defunct car project and shifting them towards an at-home, mobile robot. Though still in the early stages of research, the possible…
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