Robotics

Robots do many things formerly done only by humans - from bartending and farming to driving cars - but a Dartmouth researcher and his colleagues have invented a "smart" paint spray can that robotically reproduces photographs as large-scale murals. The computerised technique, which basically spray paints a photo, isn't likely to spawn a wave of giant graffiti, but it can be used in digital fabrication, digital and visual arts, artistic stylisation...

MEMSIC has announced the availability of a whitepaper that spotlights and explains the various types of sensors and sensing technologies found in a typical drone product. The whitepaper’s infographic pinpoints the locations of the various sensors typically found in a drone and the whitepaper explains what they do.

After studying how insects navigate through dense vegetation, researchers at Lund University have come up with a system that can be applied to flying robots. By adapting the system to drones, they can be made to adjust their speed to their surroundings and fly on their own– completely without human intervention and control.

In the US the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) currently prohibits commercial drone flights over populated areas. However, a new government sponsored committee is recommending new standards that could help speed-up the roll-out of commercial drone flights.

In the world of robot communication, it seems actions speak louder than words. Scientists in the UK have discovered that by getting robot avatars to "talk with their hands," we understand them as well as we do our fellow human beings. Avatars have been in existence since the 1980s and today are used by millions of people across the globe. They are big business too: from AI to social media and psychotherapy to high-end video games, they are used t...

An important milestone for the Human Brain Project has been reached: as of 30th March, the prototypes of the six information and communications technology (ICT) platforms are set for release. The neurorobotics platform, led by the Technical University of Munich (TUM), gives scientists the chance to apply brain models to various different robots and thus conduct their own experiments.

A small team of researchers at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore has taken the idea of controlling live insects using electronics a step further—by controlling its gait. In their paper published in Journal of the Royal Society Interface, the team describes how they created their 'cyborg' beetles, why they did so, and where they see the technology going in the future. Over the past several years, scientists have found that they c...

The human-machine interactive experience has been up for a rethink at Cambridge, MA -based Fluid Interfaces group from MIT's Media Lab. These are the innovative champions in thinking up enhanced interactions and systems that can be more responsive to people's actions. One such project is the creation of the "Flying Pantograph." A very simple way of describing it would be that it is a flying drawing machine, but that would hardly scratch the surfa...

As part of a project to improve safety in the energy pipeline industry, researchers have successfully flight-tested a miniature methane gas sensor developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, on a Vertical Take-off and Landing small unmanned aerial system (sUAS). The sensor, similar to one developed by JPL for use on Mars, enables detection of methane with much higher sensitivity than previously available for the industry ...

They are all shapes and sizes, with all numbers of legs. They can put out fires on ships, shimmy up construction sites to do dangerous inspections, safely traverse battlefields and enter power plants to plug radiation leaks. Oh, and they play soccer, too. One tiny one even break-dances. These are just some of the products of the endlessly creative mind of UCLA's Dennis Hong, director of the legendary RoMeLa (Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory), a...