Robots promise to transform our lives in myriad ways. Having already revolutionized the production line, robots are getting smarter, smaller and more capable, and they're walking, rolling and flying out of labs and into homes and businesses at an astonishing rate. With the ability to perform tasks that are considered too menial or impossible for humans, robots are destined to make many aspects of our lives easier. Will they ultimately supplant us? We'll just have to wait and see.
We've already seen a robotic device that's capable of inserting intravenous needles in people's arms. Now, researchers from New Jersey's Rutgers University have designed a system for drawing and analyzing blood samples.
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Why start from scratch when nature has already designed better robot materials and parts than ours? Japanese researchers have now developed a new way to integrate living muscle tissue onto a robotic skeleton, and make it move in a realistic way that takes some of the strain off.
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If there's one thing that robots are good for, it's reducing costs by performing tasks that would otherwise go to human workers. That was part of the inspiration behind Spyce, a new budget-friendly fast food restaurant that has a robotized kitchen.
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Nissan’s Propilot technology is at the heart of its self-driving efforts, but for its latest demo it is working on a much smaller scale. Over the weekend, the company unveiled a roving robot that uses the autonomous driving technology to draw up different soccer pitches to exact dimensions.
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If robots are ever going to earn their keep, they’ll need to learn on the job. AI researchers from Nvidia have now demonstrated a system that lets robots do just that, learning how to perform a specific task by watching someone do it just once.
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They say everyone needs to learn to crawl before they can walk, but if you're a stick-like robot dreamt up in the weird and wonderful lab at Disney Research it looks like you can skip a few steps and learn to do majestic backflips first.
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Nearly 1,800 participants from 420 associated fairs in 81 countries, regions and territories took part in this year's International Science and Engineering Fair. But there can be only one winner, and that honor went to 19 year-old Oliver Nicholls for his prototype automated robotic window cleaner.
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Engineers at Caltech and ETH Zurich have created a swimming robot that’s powered by material deformation. That means that it’s made using materials that change shape in response to temperature swings, and that deformation pushes the device through water.
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Nikolaos Mavridis has made a career out of building robots, in 2009 introducing to the world Ibn Sina, the world's first Arabic-speaking humanoid. New Atlas sat down with the scientist to pick his brains on the "uncanny valley," and whether we actually even need human-like robots at all.
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You might remember RoboBee, an insect-sized robot that flies by flapping its wings. Unfortunately, though, it has to be hard-wired to a power source. Well, one of RoboBee's creators has now helped develop RoboFly, which flies without a tether.
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