Robotics

A material that naturally adapts to changing environments was inspired by the strength, stability, and mechanical performance of the jaw of a marine worm. The protein material, which was designed and modeled by researchers from the Laboratory for Atomistic and Molecular Mechanics (LAMM) in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE), and synthesised in collaboration with the AFRL expands and contracts based on changing pH levels a...

Dystopian literature often refers to robots one day taking over the world. Ray Kurzweil predicted over a decade ago, in The Singularity is Near, that robots would reach this stage of intelligence by the year 2030. The increased processing power in the PLCs and industrial PCs used to provide logic in robots, has led to them being used in a number of industry sectors.

  How can you capture the visual texture of fabric for high-end, online retail? Well this is the exact challenge that fashion retail start-up Change of Paradigm and University College London (UCL) gave robotics consultancy Robotae, as part of a twelve month Innovate UK-funded project.

Mobile Industrial Robots (MiR) has released a new case study with its customer Magna-Power. The Magna-Power application is a prime example of the value that is driving MiR’s tremendous growth to more than 200 mobile autonomous robots installed around the world in 2016, in environments from mid-sized, regional organisations through large global manufacturers.

An international research team led by Osaka University together with Tokyo Metropolitan University, imec in Belgium and Crimson Technology has released a machine-learning device that detects the emotional state of its listeners to produce new songs that elicit new feelings. "Most machine songs depend on an automatic composition system," says Masayuki Numao, professor at Osaka University. "They are preprogrammed with songs but can only make s...

The humble bumblebee gets a lot of grief - often associated with the evil wasp that is the scourge of our summer picnics. The bee however, does have a purpose to pollinate our plants and flowers. But it is a sad fact that the population of bees is decreasing in many parts of the world, and although the reason that our beloved bees are in trouble is unclear, some technologists have come up with a solution.

In many production applications, automation is employed to carry out tasks such as gripping, moving and positioning objects, and, in some cases, controlling and regulating whole processes. These are all tasks that are also routinely carried out in nature. Ten years ago, German automation company Festo set up the Bionic Learning Network to study and learn from these natural phenomena.

Robotics researchers from Brown University have now developed an algorithm that lets robots ask for clarification when they're not sure what a person wants. The research, which will be presented this spring at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Singapore, comes from Brown's Humans to Robots Lab led by computer science professor Stefanie Tellex. Her work focuses on human-robot collaboration—making robots that can...

Until wireless power becomes mainstream, it is widely believed that the potential offered by the Internet of Things, and indeed the Industrial Internet of Things, cannot be fully realised. Scientists at Imperial College London have brought that breakthrough a step closer after demonstrating an efficient method for transferring power wirelessly to a drone while it is flying.  

One of the UK’s drone training providers, ConsortiQ, has announced it is now an approved training centre, able to award the ProQual Level 3 Certificate and Level 4 Diploma in The Remote Piloting of Unmanned Aircraft Systems for Commercial Operation. The company claims that it is now the first training centre of its kind to offer an aviation regulator approved and academically recognised drone qualification in one course - the Unmanned ...