As technology advances rapidly, the gap between the speed of policy development and technological change is becoming more prominent. This is particularly true in robotics, where current legislation often lags behind and fails to adequately frame robot technologies. This gap increases legal uncertainty and poses safety risks, as developers may not know which regulatory frameworks to follow. The resulting technology may thus perform poorly and lead to biases and discrimination.
Robotics specialists from a group led by ETH professor Raffaello D'Andrea have created a new, cube-shaped robot that can balance on its pivot and compensate for external disturbances. What makes the One-Wheel Cubli unique? Unlike its predecessors, it only requires a single reaction wheel.
Researchers from North Carolina State University and Iowa State University have demonstrated an automated technology capable of accurately measuring the angle of leaves on corn plants in the field. This technology makes data collection on leaf angles significantly more efficient than conventional techniques, providing plant breeders with useful data more quickly.
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.