[ad_1] “Our Field’s metal-epoxy composite can become as flexible as latex rubber or as stiff as hard acrylic, over 1,000 times more rigid, just by heating it up or cooling it down,” lead author Trevor Buckner said. “Long fibers of this material can be sewn onto a fabric to give it a supportive skeleton that […]
Category: Robots
NASA delays its Titan drone mission by another year
[ad_1] It’s an ambitious project. This will represent NASA’s first multi-rotor science vehicle on another celestial body, and the first of any kind to carry its full science payload between multiple areas. The drone will spend nine years flying relatively regular missions to collect samples and study both the habitability of Titan as well as […]
‘Disintegration’ multiplayer will be shut down due to lack of interest
[ad_1] Disintegration is set around two centuries in the future. The characters are neither human nor machine, but rather armored beings with human brains, with all the good and bad that entails. In the single-player campaign, pure robots are bent on eliminating humanity, while the hero Rohmer Shoal leads the transhumans in a fight to save […]
Electronic skin reacts to pain like a human
[ad_1] Electronic skins can already react to touch, but they’re not much good at reacting to the jabs and burns that cause pain. That’s a problem for prosthetics and robots that are supposed to have human-like responses. They may be more sensitive in the future, though. RMIT University researchers have developed an artificial skin (via […]
Cornell University’s laser-activated robot is smaller than a paramecium
[ad_1] The robots themselves are only 5 microns thick, 40 microns wide and between 40 and 70 microns long, depending on the design. The brain and body consist of a silicon photovoltaic circuit while the legs are made from a quartet of electrochemical actuators. “In the context of the robot’s brains, there’s a sense in […]
Harvard and Sony built a tiny surgery robot inspired by origami
[ad_1] In a microscopic tracing test, the researchers found that the mini-RCM was 68 percent more accurate than a hand-controlled tool. The robot also successfully completed a mock version of a precise procedure in which a surgeon inserts a needle through an eye to “inject therapeutics into the tiny veins at the back of the […]
iRobot’s Roomba and Bravaa mop get a huge intelligence boost
[ad_1] iRobot has been moving towards making its devices more convenient over the past few years: the Roomba i7+ added a self-cleaning bin, while the s9+ added more intelligence to work alongside the company’s Bravaa Jet m6 mop. The only problem? They cost significantly more than previous models: the i7+ originally started at $949 (now it’s down to […]
This super strength body battery is made with discarded Kevlar
[ad_1] “No other structural battery reported is comparable, in terms of energy density, to today’s state-of-the-art advanced lithium batteries. We improved our prior version of structural zinc batteries on 10 different measures, some of which are 100 times better, to make it happen,” he continued. In a study published Wednesday in the journal Science Robotics […]
AI helps drone swarms navigate through crowded, unfamiliar spaces
[ad_1] An additional tracking controller, Neural-Swarm, helps the drones compensate for aerodynamic interactions, such as the downwash from a robot flying overhead. It’s already more reliable than a “commercial” controller that doesn’t account for aerodynamics, with far smaller tracking errors. This could be useful for drone light shows, of course, but it could also help […]
MIT researchers create robotic gripper that can untangle thin cables
[ad_1] MIT researchers approached the problem from a different angle, building a two-fingered gripper that’s meant to more closely resemble human fingers. The fingers are outfitted with high resolution tactile sensors, known as “GelSight” sensors, made of soft rubber with embedded cameras and mounted on a movable robot arm. The system has two controllers: one […]