Robotics News

March 30, 2016

Morphing Metal Shapes Future of Soft Robotics

Bacteria-Powered Microrobots Plot a Course

Real Feel: Prosthesis Connects to Bone, Nerves

Robot as a Personal Tutor in Preschool

Latest Headlines

updated 3:17am EDT

Phone-Based Laser Rangefinder Works Outdoors

Mar. 25, 2016 — A new infrared depth-sensing system is being presented by researchers, built from a smartphone with a $10 laser attached to it, that works outdoors as well ... read more

Read My Lips: New Technology Spells out What's Said When Audio Fails

Mar. 25, 2016 — New lip-reading technology could help in solving crimes and provide communication assistance for people with hearing and speech ... read more

Humanoid Robot Works in Therapy for Children With Autism

Mar. 14, 2016 — Children with autism have special difficulty in expressing emotions, usually have no social skills and face major problems when communicating. In order to help children with ... read more

Crowd Review: Using the Wisdom of the Crowd to Improve Design

Mar. 15, 2016 — Research demonstrates how consumer product reviews published on the internet could be analyzed through data mining techniques and allow designers to find ways to improve a given product or even add ... read more

Less Than Meets the Eye: How Do Computers -- Or Our Brains -- Recognize Images?

Mar. 10, 2016 — We do not merely recognize objects -- our brain is so good at this task that we can automatically supply the concept of a ... read more

Some Assembly Required to Boost Robot Ratings

Mar. 9, 2016 — Robot makers may want to follow Ikea's strategy for customer satisfaction and give people a chance to partially assemble their new robots to ease acceptance of the devices, according to ... read more

Amputee Feels Texture With a Bionic Fingertip

Mar. 8, 2016 — An amputee feels rough or smooth textures in real-time -- in his phantom hand -- using an artificial fingertip connected to nerves in the arm. The advancement will accelerate ... read more

Big Data for Text: Next-Generation Text Understanding and Analysis

Mar. 7, 2016 — News portals and social media are rich information sources, for example for predicting stock market trends. Today, numerous service providers allow for searching large text collections by feeding ... read more

Super Elastic Electroluminescent 'Skin' Will Soon Create Mood Robots

Mar. 3, 2016 — Engineers have developed an electroluminescent "skin" that stretches to more than six times its original size while still emitting light. The discovery could lead to ... read more

How to Tame Your Robot

Mar. 1, 2016 — A student has put the power of interacting with robots into our hands ... read more

Robot Greets Travelers at Tokyo Airport

Raw: Underwater Video of Sunken Navy Tug

You Might See This Self-Driving Delivery Robot on Your Sidewalks Soon

Domino's Is Testing An Actual Pizza Delivery Robot

Big Data-Driven Method Could Save Money, Increase Efficiency in Pharmaceutical Management

Mar. 29, 2016 — An optimized approach for determining prescribed medication associations within a high-volume pharmacy environment has been developed, which experts say could save money and ... read more

Voice-Controlled Nutrition Tracker May Aid Weight Loss

Mar. 24, 2016 — A few years ago, nutritionists who had been experimenting with mobile-phone apps for recording caloric intake approached computer scientists with the idea of a spoken-language application that would ... read more

Orchestration of Systems of Mobile Robots for Border Protection, Search and Rescue, and Personal Security

Mar. 11, 2016 — 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 ... read more

Hooray for Hollywood Robots: Movie Machines May Boost Robot Acceptance

Mar. 10, 2016 — Remembering robots from film portrayals may help ease some of the anxiety that older adults have about using a robot, according to Penn State ... read more

First Code of Conduct for the Use of Virtual Reality Established

Mar. 4, 2016 — Researchers summarize problems and offer recommendations for the future of virtual reality. The technological capacity for generating virtual worlds from home computers will soon be widely available ... read more

Are Parents of 'Difficult' Children More Likely to Use iPads to Calm Kids Down?

Feb. 29, 2016 — It may be tempting to hand an iPad or Smartphone to a tantrum-throwing child -- and maybe more so for some parents. A study shows that devices were more likely to be used as a coping strategy to ... read more

In Emergencies, Should You Trust a Robot?

Feb. 29, 2016 — In emergencies, people may trust robots too much for their own safety, a new study suggests. In a mock building fire, test subjects followed instructions from an “Emergency Guide Robot” even ... read more

Microrobots Learn from Ciliates

Feb. 25, 2016 — Ciliates can do amazing things: Being so tiny, the water in which they live is like thick honey to these microorganisms. In spite of this, however, they are able to self-propel through water by the ... read more

Automatic Programming Makes Swarm Robots Safer and More Reliable

Feb. 25, 2016 — 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 ... read more

Computers Can Tell If You're Bored, Shows New Study

Feb. 24, 2016 — Computers are able to read a person's body language to tell whether they are bored or interested in what they see on the screen. The research shows that by measuring a person's movements as ... read more

How Mobile Ads Leak Personal Data

Feb. 23, 2016 — Free smart phone apps aren't really free. A research finds that mobile apps can leak your personal, sensitive information from personalized advertisements. Researchers found that mobile app ... read more

Underwater Robots Can Be Programmed to Make Independent Decisions

Feb. 23, 2016 — Researchers have authored a paper on the advantage of linking multi-sensor systems aboard an AUV to enable the vehicle to synthesize sound data in real-time so that it can independently make ... read more

Smart Skin Made of Recyclable Materials May Transform Medicine and Robotics

Feb. 19, 2016 — Smart skin that can respond to external stimuli could have important applications in medicine and ... read more

Tunnel Through the Head: Internally Coupled Ears Enable Directional Hearing in Animals

Feb. 18, 2016 — Humans use the time delay at the ears to deduce the origin of a sound signal. In frogs, lizards and birds the distance between the ears is too small. However, they have a cavity connecting the ... read more

Robotic Exoskelton AIDS in Post-Stroke Motor Skill Rehabilitaion

Feb. 18, 2016 — Motor skill training using a robotic arm exoskeleton may be beneficial to people suffering from post-stroke weakness affecting an entire side of their body, according to new ... read more

Planning Algorithm Also Generates Contingency Plans

Feb. 16, 2016 — Planning algorithms are widely used in logistics and control. They can help schedule flights and bus routes, guide autonomous robots, and determine control policies for the power grid, among other ... read more

When Machines Can Do Any Job, What Will Humans Do?

Feb. 13, 2016 — Computer scientists expects that within 30 years, machines will be capable of doing almost any job that humans can. In anticipation of this development, he is asking his colleagues, "What will ... read more

Using Stories to Teach Human Values to Artificial Agents

Feb. 12, 2016 — 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 ... read more

Robotically Driven System Could Reduce Cost of Discovering Drug, Target Interactions

Feb. 9, 2016 — 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 percent, has been created ... read more

Cockroach Inspires Robot Squeezes Through Cracks

Feb. 8, 2016 — Ever wonder how roaches are able to get into anything, no matter how tight the seams? Biologists have now shown that the American cockroach can flatten its body to one-fifth normal running height to ... read more

Tuesday, March 29, 2016