Science News

Research news from leading universities

Can we use our brains to directly control machines -- without requiring a body as the middleman? Miguel Nicolelis talks through an astonishing experiment, in which a clever monkey in the US learns to control a monkey avatar, and then a robot arm in Japan, purely with its thoughts. The research has big implications for quadraplegic people -- and maybe for all of us. (Filmed at TEDMED 2012.)

I've been developing ways to use 3d powder printing to make air powered robots that have no hard moving parts. Using procedural modeling I can create rapid iterations, incremental designs, and inexpensive prototypes with a simple set of tools. Find more details at - http://har.ms/category/blog/soft-robots/

Here's an early demonstration of a trefoil tentacle in action. There are three hollow ribbed volumes inside this tentacle that control its motion. It is controlled through a Processing interface and an Arduino switching a bank of solenoid valves using a simple Darlington transistor. You can grab the code here -http://forums.adafruit.com/viewtopic....

This soft-body robot developed at Harvard's Whitesides Research Group jumps using internal gas explosions.

"Diego-san was developed to approximate the complexity of a human body, including the use of actuators that have similar dynamics to that of human muscles,"

HyTAQ Robot (Hybrid Terrestrial and Aerial Quadrotor) Arash Kalantari, Matthew Spenko The HyTAQ robot has been developed in the Robotics Lab at Illinois Inst...

Complex flying robots are being given arms and claws so they can grab and place things.

Featured on http://www.robots-dreams.com. Some people compete in ROBO-ONE to win and become the champion. Other people join in to improve their skill level.

Featured on http://www.robots-dreams.com. Here's another good example of Mark Tilden's skill at robot design. The Roboraptor, introduced for sale in 2005, wa...

A small, two-wheeled robot has been driven by a male silkmoth to track down the sex pheromone usually given off by a female. 

The robot, created by researchers from the University of Tokyo, has been used to characterise the silkmoth's tracking behaviours and it is hoped that these can be applied to other autonomous robots so they can track down smells, and subsequent sources, of environmental spills and leaks when fitted with highly sensitive sensors. 

The results have been published in IOP Publishing's journal Bioinspiration and Biomimetics. From Wednesday 6 February the paper can be downloaded fromhttp://iopscience.iop.org/1748-3190/8...

Old school public education reformers put citizenship, and habits of social interaction, front and center.

That's the promise of robotic refueling on orbit: aging satellites can get a new lease on life from a robotic machine making a service call. Or, at least, the dream of such a system got dramatically closer after NASA's robotic mission success. NASA had an idea, and in a series of extraordinary tests, decided to demonstrate that technologies for servicing satellites in space had evolved to levels of material value. Extending the lifespans of satellites already at work hundreds, even thousands of miles above the Earth, could soon be a reality. In a six-day test at the International Space Station called the Robotic Refueling Mission, they tried out tools and techniques for repairing and refueling satellites without a single astronaut in sight. It's a story with historical roots dating back to the 1980's, and with RRM's twenty-first century on-orbit success, it shines a light on bold imaginings for a space-faring future that suddenly doesn't seem so far ahead. In this documentary we look at the lifecycle of this extraordinary initiative.

Interviewers are likely to lead witnesses astray. It's time for the machines to start asking the questions

A humanoid robot from Seoul University of Science and Technology, operating completely autonomously during the Performance competition at Robot Japan held in Tokyo.

The robot locates the basketball hoop, walks across the court, positions itself, raises its arm, and tries to throw the basketball through the hoop.

The difference between the first and second attempts was the robots distance from the hoop. It was further away the second time.

Working with the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory (MCWL), researchers from DARPA's LS3 program demonstrated new advances in the robot's control, stability and maneuverability, including "Leader Follow" decision making, enhanced roll recovery, exact foot placement over rough terrain, the ability to maneuver in an urban environment, and verbal command capability.