New Atlas · Robotics · 实时热榜

“Fall like a maple seed, sail like a boat” sounds like advice from legendary heavyweight boxer Muhammad Ali. In reality, it describes a new robotic platform scientists have created for fast, long-term deployment to monitor remote waters. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: Transformable , Watercraft , Biomimicry , Flight

Remember that “dancing pencils” game schoolchildren played, where they passed two pencils through a small rubber band, twisted them repeatedly, and then let go to make the pencils jump around as the band unraveled? Turns out they were onto some serious futuristic robotics, as scientists are now applying a roughly related principle to facilitate movement in robots. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: UCLA , locomotion , University of Michigan

That old phone gathering dust in a drawer could have a second life far more entertaining than being a paperweight. UCLA researchers have created PhoneBot, a little humanoid that puts your smartphone to work as the brains of a walking robot companion. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: UCLA , Android , smartphones , Recycling

Biomimicry involves borrowing ideas from nature to solve engineering problems. This is what one of the research teams at New York University's Tandon School of Engineering specializes in. We recently covered their fish-inspired robot, so exploring water bodies seems to be taken care of. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: New York University , Biomimicry , locomotion

If you've already designed a soft-bodied robot, it kind of defeats the purpose if you just go and stick a rigid motor inside of it. That's why Swiss scientists have created a motor that takes the form of a thin, flexible fiber. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: EPFL , Soft Robotics , Artificial Muscles

We’ve already seen robots that can swim like fish, stick to walls like geckos, and grab objects like elephants. Now, engineers at the University of Washington are building a new type of robot inspired by … the flea. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: University of Washington , locomotion , Biomimicry

Researchers have developed a paper-thin foot membrane that lets crawling microrobots harvest electricity directly from the ground beneath them, ditching heavy onboard batteries by turning metal and silicon surfaces into an active power source. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: Robotics , Skin , Energy , Batteries

Agilink, a spin-off of Chinese robotics giant AgiBot, asked Fu Xianghong, a master of traditional Suzhou embroidery, to train its OmniHand 3 Ultra. The synthetic hand has learned to split silk strands, thread a needle, stretch fabric across a frame, and stitch, following a craft with more than 2,500 years of history. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: Robotics , Hand , Humanoid , Dexterity , Silk

An MIT robot powered by a single layer of living muscle cells swam through a watery maze, following a light held in a researcher’s hand. It is slow, tiny and nowhere near ready for the open ocean, but its thin design could point toward softer, cheaper swimming machines. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: MIT , Research , Robotics , Water , Swim

Robots – that is, self-guided mechanisms interacting with or changing their environments – exist in the popular imagination as large, blocky, metallic beings like R2D2 or TARS from Interstellar. But the field of soft robotics offers a vast array of robotic limbs, sensors, and body types that greatly expand our understanding of what shapes a robot can manifest and what tasks it can perform. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: North Carolina State University , Soft Robotics , l

A robotic suit that lets someone with a spinal-cord injury stand up, look a friend in the eye, or stir a pot on the stove without anyone's help just cleared its biggest hurdle. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the agency that vets medical devices before they reach the public, has authorized commercial sale of Eve, a personal exoskeleton built by French company Wandercraft. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: Robotics , Exoskeleton , Mobility , Wearable

If you think that cockroaches are creepy and useless, we can prove you wrong. Well, at least the “useless” part. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: University of Queensland , Cyborg , Insect , Rescue , Disasters

Few things make the career jump from regional cuisine delicacy to robotics actuator. Yet, in research vaguely reminiscent of RoboCop, scientists have used skeletal muscle from a literal frog leg as an actuator to control a tiny robotic manta ray. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: Chinese Academy of Sciences , Muscle , locomotion , Biomimicry , Swimming

Nature is undoubtedly the smartest engineer. Scientists have borrowed ideas from armadillos, elephants and birds to build robots capable of doing things that conventional man-made machines struggle with. Now, researchers at New York University's Tandon School of Engineering have turned to fish. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: New York University , Biomimicry , Fish , locomotion

This cute little robot duck isn't actually a toy. It's actually a platform for budding roboticists to train on and develop skills. But heck, this might be the most fun design for a hackable machine we've seen yet. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: Robot , Artificial Intelligence

Today, you can buy almost anything with a few clicks on your phone. Online shopping has created millions of small deliveries, and a lot of them could be handled more efficiently if humans had a little mechanical help. That’s where delivery robots come in. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: Quadruped , Delivery robots

Are household humanoid robots getting cheaper already? We've only just begun seeing companies start to make promises and accept pre-orders for machines that can do your laundry and tidy up the living room. A San Francisco-based startup is now making one that you can bring home for just US$1,688. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: Robot , Tele-operation , Humanoid , assistant robot

Watching skilled excavator operators work is almost hypnotic. They make it look so easy that the machine seems to move like an extension of the operator's own arm. That intuition usually takes years to build, but a new controller from MIT engineers compresses that learning curve to a single session. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: Robotics , MIT , Interface , Robotic construction , Construction

You don’t have to watch Kevin Costner’s Waterworld to know that for much of the world, the future will be increasingly flooded. As climate chaos causes oceans to swallow coastlands, and as surging water displaces and devastates communities, social survival will demand that people find ways to live and work with – and on – the water. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: MIT , Autonomous , Watercraft , Biomimicry

The US is banning the sale of robots made outside the country. That includes all the cool ones we've covered out of China, which can dance, provide companionship to seniors, fight fires, and carry loads over rocky terrain. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: Humanoid , Robots , Quadruped , Inverter , China

Why pay to design and mass-produce a four-wheeled autonomous security robot, when you can make a less costly one with just one wheel? That's the thinking behind the 1Rollo, a monowheel-bot that could soon be patrolling near you. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: Self Balancing Unicycle , Autonomous , Monowheel , Security

Evolution has already found solutions to lots of problems, so engineers more often borrow ideas from nature instead of reinventing the wheel. We’ve previously seen robots that can curl up like armadillos to protect themselves, and now researchers have developed yet another soft robotic gripper that mimics the tip of an elephant’s trunk. It’s called EleTac and, according to its creators, can actually “feel” the objects it touches. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: Japan Adva

People have been fantasizing about humanoid robots for decades. Movies such as Blade Runner, Ex Machina, and A.I. Artificial Intelligence imagined a future where robots and AI could interact with humans and save them from loneliness. Today, those sci-fi stories seem to be closer to reality than ever before, as Chinese company Ubtech has recently launched a product it calls the world’s first full-size, mass-produced "ultrabionic" companion robot. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering

What sounds more terrifying than a part-cockroach, part-robot cyborg? Definitely one that can also breathe underwater. Yet, this is exactly what researchers have just created, except they are replacing “terrifying” with “useful.” Scientists from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Singapore and Waseda University in Japan have created a soft, flexible diving suit for cyborg cockroaches. The suits are equipped with miniature oxygen generators that allow the cockroaches to survive for up to thre

A robot that swims like a diving bird and then flies like, well, a bird, sounds like the setup for two different machines bolted together. But researchers at MIT and EPFL built one that does both with a single set of wings. No propellers, no legs, and no origami-style folding mechanism to switch modes. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: MIT , Robots , Engineering , Birds , EPFL , Biomimicry , Flight , Dive , Swim

Surgeons at UC San Diego just handed the scalpel to two humanoid robots, who went on to complete live surgical procedures for the first time in history. This milestone moves beyond the fixed robotic arms found in operating rooms today and hints at an operating room of the future where humans and humanoids work side by side. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: Robots , Humanoid , Surgical robot , Surgery , Tele-operation , UC San Diego

Weave Robotics announced its first robot for folding laundry just five months ago, and it already has a new product on offer. Like its predecessor, the new Isaac 1 robot also folds clothes. But unlike the old model, this one can tidy up your living room and make the bed on demand. It looks cuter, too. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: Artificial Intelligence , Tele-operation , assistant robot

Agriculture is one of the industries that is getting increasingly affected by robotics, which totally makes sense, as farmers around the world face human labor shortages and also rising labor costs. For some crops, labor accounts for almost 50% of production expenses. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: West Virginia University , Agriculture , Fruit , Vegetables , Crops , Hand

The sandfish lizard moves very efficiently through the sands of the Sahara desert, and not surprisingly, it doesn't use wheels to do so. Scientists have now copied the reptile's swimming motion in an experimental Mars rover that outperforms others in sandy soil. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: locomotion , Biomimicry , Wheel , Rover , Mars

Robots exploring the ocean floor today use pre-programmed movements, centralized processors, and rigid structures to do their work. But the sea is unpredictable, and that architecture struggles wherever currents shift, visibility drops, or terrain changes without warning. Now, researchers at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) have taken a very different approach to sidestep all of that – one 500 million years in the making. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: Italian I

Soft robots have a “cardiovascular” problem. While their bodies can deform and bend, their hearts, the pumps that keep them moving, have remained bulky and rigid. Researchers at the University of Bristol have created a “soft” miniature pump that weighs about as much as a single dried pumpkin seed, but can generate enough hydraulic pressure to power soft robotic systems without bulky compressors or rigid mechanical pumps. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: University of Brist

Most of nature – including humans – is symmetrical, and as creations reflect their creators, many robots we create today feature this symmetry, with the general assumption that symmetry is best. Researchers at Duke University have challenged that assumption with Argus, a sea-urchin-like robot that ditches conventional symmetry altogether. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: Duke University , locomotion , Omni-Directional

Nature has long served as a source of inspiration for scientific innovations. Many animals have evolved defensive features such as skins, shells, and scales to protect themselves from predators. Because protective mechanisms are essential in both biological organisms and engineered systems, a lot of these features have already been adopted in modern technologies. Recently, researchers from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at North Carolina State University drew inspiration

Picture a surgical robot that can move, cut tissue, release drugs, grip and store samples, and wirelessly generate heat. You most likely didn't imagine a robot that can fit in your hands. Yet, scientists have created a 5-in-1 robot that fits right on your fingertip! Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: Nanyang Technological University , Drug delivery , Surgical robot

The day is coming when you may walk past a robot and have no idea it was a robot. Over years of engineering, we've given robots skeletons, brains, senses, and even a nervous system. Muscles have proven particularly complex (not that the other things were easy). Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: Harvard , 3D Printing , Artificial Muscles

It’s fairly easy for people to learn from other people – we’ve been doing it for around 300,000 years – because we can observe, copy, and modify what they’re doing. It’s less easy for us to learn from other animals that way, because the less our cognition and bodies are alike, the harder it is to copy and modify what they do. Learning about plants, fungi, protozoa, and bacteria is easy enough, but learning from them? Forget it. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: EPFL , Learn

Unitree has just gone and made many a kid-at-heart's wildest dream come true. The Chinese robotics firm has created the GD01, a functional mecha suit that you can hop into and walk about on two legs or four. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: Unitree , Future Robot

Countless industrial tools and robots need to grip things, and because we humans learn to grip since infancy, we can easily underestimate how complex gripping actually is. If our grip is too rigid, we can snap or shatter our payload; if our grip is too soft, our payload may slip from our fingers or exceed lift capacity. Human hands have advantages: rigid bones covered in pliable skin and muscles. So, what’s a poor mechanism to do when it simply wants to lift? Continue Reading Category: Robotics

World-renowned science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke (2001: A Space Odyssey, Childhood’s End) once quipped that “Any teacher who can be replaced by a computer should be.” Some people think Clarke’s statement means we should replace all teachers. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: Exoskeleton , Education , Training aid , Ghent University , Violin

Thanks to researchers at Georgia Tech, robots have taken several new steps towards replacing human labor – and not simply for dangerous tasks such as mining the depths of the Earth and exploring the Moon, or difficult tasks such as high-speed mass-assembly of thousands of cars. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: Georgia Tech , Georgia Institute of Technology , Humanoid

Flying under the radar of robot hype, Sony AI's Ace has shown off its rapid-speed learning abilities that are seriously remarkable, displaying powerful split-second decision-making while taking on some of the best table tennis players – and winning. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: Sony , Sport , Autonomous , Self-Learning , Robotic construction

Roboticists at Harvard and the Indian Institute of Technology Madras – very smart folks indeed – somehow entirely missed the great name “antdroids” when building the insectoid drones they call RAnts (robotic ants, which do not, in fact, rant about anything – not even against a tyrannical robotic ant queen). Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: Harvard , Biomimicry , Ants , Robotic construction

An aquarium can really add a touch of class to a home or business, particularly if it's got some fancy fish in it – but such fish can be very hard to keep. So, why not just buy a weirdly lifelike "robofish" like this one, that needs nothing more than a daily battery-charge? Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: Fish , Biomimicry

"Ancient Japanese Art Brings Spineless Robot To Life!" Sounds very much like a movie plot summary. In reality, it perfectly describes the work of Princeton University engineers who have created a robot that moves without a single motor or gear, using heat and the principles of origami instead. Their soft robotic system relies on a combination of heat-sensitive advanced materials, flexible embedded electronics, and carefully designed folding structures to produce motion, ditching traditional mech

Disaster sites vary as widely as rescue missions. Using robotics to help often requires multiple robots to survey, climb, lift, or manipulate objects. Athena unites all these capabilities in a single, rugged, autonomous platform built for search and rescue. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: Technical University of Darmstadt , Disasters , Rescue

Since the early 1900s, dogs have helped people who are blind or have low vision to navigate their world. Now, in a very 21st century twist, seeing-eye dogs have gone robotic and added a skill that not even the most well-trained canine could pull off: conversation. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: Unitree , Dogs , Binghamton University , Blindness

Despite decades of technological progress, robots still can’t move as smoothly as humans – they drop objects, and struggle to pick them up properly. Scientists have been trying to teach robots to move with the same precision as humans, but hand movement is more complex than it might seem at first glance. Even a simple action, like holding and scrolling your phone, uses dozens of small muscles, joints, and over 100 tendons and ligaments working together. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engi

The Robotics and AI Institute (RAI) has just released a video of its Roadrunner robot. Although it lacks a torso, the bipedal bot more than makes up for it by rolling, stomping, stair-climbing, and even showing off while using only one of its legs. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: Future Robot , RAI , Boston Dynamics , biped

It took nature millions of years to create intelligent, adaptive species. Researchers at Northwestern University in Illinois are using AI to evolve robots in minutes. The result is a robot that is agile, highly adaptive, and technically indestructible. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: Northwestern University , Artificial Intelligence , adaptive

When it comes to systems for cleaning up marine oil spills, most of them simply float in place, waiting for the oil to come to them. A new robot, however, could proactively move through oil slicks – and it's inspired by both a dolphin and a sea urchin. Continue Reading Category: Robotics , Engineering Tags: RMIT University , Environment , Oil , Biomimicry