The Lego robot Sentosa et al., 2023, PLoS ONE A robot made of Lego can quickly perform an important step for creating machines made of DNA. “This started as a final project in an undergraduate lab course,” says Rizal Hariadi at Arizona State University, who tasked his class with building …
Read More »Tentacle robot can bend through pipes and unscrew bolts
A small, soft robot can bend through pipes Shutterstock/Dmitry Kalinovsky A tubular, soft robot controlled by light can pump liquids, unscrew bolts and travel through pipes. The robot can also be designed to bend in the direction of a light source, like a plant tilting towards the sun. In some …
Read More »Tiny robot could stop bleeding from inside the body using heat
A small robot that can shape-shift and produce heat could incinerate cancer cells or stop bleeding from inside the body. It could also be used to ferry drugs directly to tumours or hard-to-reach places like arteries. Tiny robots with soft bodies have shown promise for delivering drugs without causing damage …
Read More »Robot gardener grows plants as well as humans do but uses less water
An automated robot gardener has shown its nurturing side by matching humans in trials of growing vegetables – and it did it with more efficient use of water. Simeon Adebola at the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues have developed an automated plot, called AlphaGarden, that contains a mix …
Read More »Google robot learns to sort the recyclables left in office waste bins
Waste-sorting robots that have been learning their job while wandering through Google offices can now effectively sort items in bins into recycling, compost and rubbish. One way of teaching machines to perform tasks is by reinforcement learning, in which a robot is told what a successful outcome looks like and …
Read More »Watch a weird robot wiggle and flap like a seal moving on land
With heavy bodies and small flippers, seals aren’t the most graceful movers out of water. But despite appearances, a robot that imitates the way they flop over dry land might be effective in search and rescue operations where a wheeled robot would struggle, says the team that made it. Dimuthu …
Read More »Robot injected in the skull spreads its tentacles to monitor the brain
The robot’s soft legs are filled with sensors that measure brain activity Sukho Song A soft robot inserted through a tiny hole in the skull can deploy six sensor-filled legs on the surface of the brain. A version of this soft robot has been successfully tested in a miniature pig …
Read More »Rise of the robot avatar: From security androids to nuclear repairs, we test the latest robotic avatars
The world’s largest robotics conference, the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, came to London last week, where a dizzying array of cutting-edge robots were on display, including robotic dogs, flying robots, controllable androids and robot artists. But it was avatars – robots that allow a human to interact …
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