Robotics

Fabrics containing flexible electronics are appearing in many novel products, such as clothes with in-built screens and solar panels. More impressively, these fabrics can act as electronic skins that can sense their surroundings and could have applications in robotics and prosthetic medicine. Researchers at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia, have now developed smart threads that detect the strength and locat...

  With support from the Office of Naval Research (ONR), researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have created an AI software program named Quixote to teach robots to read stories, learn acceptable behaviour and understand successful ways to conduct themselves in diverse social situations.

Thymio, the teaching robot designed by EPFL and widely used in French-speaking Switzerland, is now making inroads elsewhere in Europe. In France, it has been incorporated in an important initiative to teach digital sciences in nursery and primary schools. The first one emerged from EPFL's labs barely four years ago. There are now more than 14,000 Thymios in use around the world. This little teaching robot has become widely popular. 

Valkyrie has recently landed at Northeastern, marking the first time that the 6-foot-2-inch, 275-pound humanoid robot has interacted with the public. There was a demo: As part of an hourlong presentation, the robot walked across the carpet in the event space on the 17th floor of East Village, turned to face the audience, and then waved, eliciting a surge of laughter.

Robots carry out their tasks more safely if they are controlled by another technology. This makes them much more suitable for use in the care sector, as revealed by a study conducted at the Robotics and Mechatronics department at the University of Twente. Researcher Stefan Groothuis is being awarded his PhD for this work. In the coming years the use of assistive robotics, as they are known, will become ever more important due to the increased age...

Seiko Epson announced the development of its S250 series of high-precision force sensors. The S250 series, which will be rolled out worldwide from early June, will be available as an option for the company's six-axis and SCARA robots. Employing Epson's proprietary piezoelectric quartz sensing technology, the new force sensors are durable and sensitive, allowing them to accurately and consistently sense minimal amounts of force in six directions.

Hitachi announced that it has developed a basic AI technology that analyses huge volumes of Japanese text data on issues that are subject to debate, and presents in Japanese both affirmative and negative opinions on those issues together with reasons and grounds. In this research, Hitachi applied deep learning to the process of distinguishing sentences representing reasons and grounds for opinions, eliminating the need for a dedicated program to ...

The policing of the restricted airspace over airports is becoming increasingly complex and challenging due to the proliferation of consumer drones – and we have already had several incidents of high profile near misses between consumer drones and commercial aircraft. The US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) is currently reporting more than 100 drone sightings within the vicinity of US airports each month.

In order for robots to circulate on sidewalks and mingle with humans in other crowded places, they’ll have to understand the unwritten rules of pedestrian behaviour. Stanford researchers have created a short, non-humanoid prototype of a moving, self-navigating machine. The robot is nicknamed “Jackrabbot” – after the jackrabbits often seen darting across the Stanford campus.

Our excitement with and rapid uptake of technology – and the growing opportunities for artificial brain enhancement – are putting humans more firmly on the path to becoming cyborgs, according to evolution experts from the University of Adelaide. In their new book The Dynamic Human, authors Professor Maciej Henneberg and Dr Aurthur Saniotis chart the full scope of human evolution, with a look at the past, present and future development...