Roboticists have developed many advanced systems over the past decade or so, yet most of these systems still require some degree of human supervision. Ideally, future robots should explore unknown environments autonomously and independently, continuously collecting data and learning from this data.
Carnegie Mellon University engineers have developed a soft material with metal-like conductivity and self-healing properties that is the first to maintain enough electrical adhesion to support digital electronics and motors. This advance, published in Nature Electronics, marks a breakthrough in softbotics and the fields of robotics, electronics, and medicine.
A review paper by scientists at the Beijing Institute of Technology summarized recent efforts and future potential in the use of in vitro biological neural networks (BNNs) for the realization of biological intelligence, with a focus on those related to robot intelligence.
The development of stimuli-responsive polymers has brought about a wealth of material-related opportunities for next-generation small-scale, wirelessly controlled soft-bodied robots. For some time now, engineers have known how to use these materials to make small robots that can walk, swim and jump. So far, no one has been able to make them fly.
With generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems such as ChatGPT and StableDiffusion being the talk of the town right now, it might feel like we've taken a giant leap closer to a sci-fi reality where AIs are physical entities all around us.
A group of robot engineers at the University of California Santa Barbara has designed and built a robot that mimics the way roots and vines move toward moisture sources. They describe their approach and robot prototype in a paper uploaded to the arXiv preprint server.
Scientists at the University of Bristol have drawn on the design and life of a mysterious zooplankton to develop underwater robots.
Technological advances have opened exciting possibilities for space exploration, which could potentially lead to new discoveries about the celestial bodies in our galaxy. Robots have proved to be particularly promising tools to explore other planets, particularly Mars, a terrestrial planet in the solar system that is known to host some similar elements to those found on Earth.
Underwater structures that can change their shapes dynamically, the way fish do, push through water much more efficiently than conventional rigid hulls. But constructing deformable devices that can change the curve of their body shapes while maintaining a smooth profile is a long and difficult process. MIT's RoboTuna, for example, was composed of about 3,000 different parts and took about two years to design and build.
When completing missions and tasks in the real-world, robots should ideally be able to effectively grasp objects of various shapes and compositions. So far, however, most robots can only grasp specific types of objects.