Robotics News – Latest Headlines

Orchestration of systems of mobile robots for border protection, search and rescue, and personal security

New research enables the efficient planning of the activities of systems of mobile robots for socially beneficial services including border patrol, search and rescue, and security escort.

Posted: Mar 7th, 2016

Super elastic electroluminescent skin will soon create mood robots

Imagine a health care robot that could display the patient's temperature and pulse, and even reacts to a patient's mood.

Posted: Mar 3rd, 2016

How to tame your robot

Now programming robots is not just for those with years of coding knowledge, it's for anyone who wants to experience what it's like to simply wave at a robot and have it wave back.

Posted: Mar 1st, 2016

In emergencies, should you trust a robot? (w/video)

In emergencies, people may trust robots too much for their own safety, a new study suggests.

Posted: Feb 29th, 2016

Automatic programming makes swarm robots safer and more reliable

Researchers have applied a novel method of automatically programming and controlling a swarm of up to 600 robots to complete a specified set of tasks simultaneously.

Posted: Feb 25th, 2016

Using stories to teach human values to artificial agents

Artificial intelligence technique Quixote teaches 'value alignment' to robots by training them to read stories, learn acceptable sequences of events and understand successful ways to behave in human societies.

Posted: Feb 13th, 2016

Robotically driven system could reduce cost of discovering drug and target interactions

Scientists have created the first robotically driven experimentation system to determine the effects of a large number of drugs on many proteins, reducing the number of necessary experiments by 70%.

Posted: Feb 9th, 2016

Cockroach inspires robot that squeezes through cracks (w/video)

Cockroaches' ability to squeeze through the tiniest cracks has inspired a robot that can rapidly squeeze through cracks - a new capability for search-and-rescue in rubble resulting from tornados, earthquakes and explosions.

Posted: Feb 9th, 2016

Robotic fingers with a gentle touch

Scientists have invented a new soft gripper that uses electroadhesion: flexible electrode flaps that act like a thumb-index duo. It can pick up fragile objects of arbitrary shape and stiffness, like an egg, a water balloon or paper.

Posted: Feb 1st, 2016

Half million dollar Robotic Art Grand Challenge seeks technologists to build a classical artist

In the tradition of recent Technological Grand Challenges, RobotArt has pledged over half a million dollars in prizes over 5 years to competitors in a new Robotic Grand Challenge. This Grand Challenge is simple to describe but difficult to master, create a robot that paints with a brush like a classical master. The more skilled and creative the robot, the better.

Posted: Jan 27th, 2016

NIST launches national competition to make robots more agile

Manufacturers, robot suppliers and researchers, here's your chance to get in on the ground floor of an upcoming national competition intended to help make robots handier and nimbler performers on the factory floor.

Posted: Jan 21st, 2016

Microbots individually controlled using 'mini force fields'

Researchers are using a technology likened to 'mini force fields' to independently control individual microrobots operating within groups, an advance aimed at using the tiny machines in areas including manufacturing and medicine.

Posted: Jan 12th, 2016

Robot scientists discuss European research road maps

From 12 to 15 January, about 100 leaders from science and industry come to University of Twente's campus to discuss public-private partnerships in robotics. At the end of the week, there will be the kick-off of an innovative project, led by UT, about robots that will improve biopsy for cancer diagnostics.

Posted: Jan 11th, 2016