Robotics

We've already seen attempts to realize a sci-fi vision of the future and put robot helpers in the home to make our lives easier. Startup Eeve is also developing a personal robot pal, but Willow X's job is to help you keep your garden tidy.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have been tinkering away on a robotic chef and developed a machine with an ability to "taste test" food as it goes, making sure the balance of flavors is just the way it should be.

If you say “jump” I say “how high?” – and a new robot from UC Santa Barbara says “over 100 ft.” The researchers say that’s higher than anything else has ever jumped, be it robot or animal, thanks to a unique design that multiplies its stored energy.

The West Japan Rail Company has released video of its new humanoid heavy equipment robot. Mounted on the end of a crane, this gundam-style robot torso mimics the arm and head motions of a human pilot, who sees through the robot's eyes via VR goggles.

While scientists have already created tight-space-exploring robots based on snakes and cockroaches, rats are also highly adept at squeezing through narrow openings. They now have a robotic equivalent of their own, in the form of the SQuRo.

Boston Dynamics’ robot dog Spot has been tasked with a new job - patrolling the ancient ruins of Pompeii. The robot will be used to inspect the site for safety issues and record structural changes over time to better manage the historic ruins.

A thin new robot developed at the University of Leeds designed to diagnose and treat cancer takes the shape of a tentacle, which can be magnetically guided into the depths of the lungs to inspect suspicious lesions or deliver drugs.

Researchers at MIT have developed a handheld robot that can help minimally trained responders to control severe internal bleeding in victims of traumatic injury, by helping them insert a needle and catheter into a major blood vessel.

MIT's mini cheetah robot has reached its fastest speed yet, hitting 8.72 mph thanks to a new model-free reinforcement learning system that allows the robot to figure out on its own the best way to run and allows it to adapt to different terrain.

Kawasaki Heavy Industries has plenty of experience mass-producing industrial robots, and now we get to see some of its early progress into service robots, multi-purpose humanoids, and, for some reason, a rather silly-looking ride-on robot goat.

We first heard about the iCub humanoid robot in 2011, when it was nominated to take part in the Olympic Torch Relay. The latest and greatest version, the iCub 3, was the star of a recently-announced (and pretty impressive) telepresence demonstration.

When conducting studies on how people react to different emotions, actual human faces may not express those emotions the same way each time, while photos just aren't as impactful. That's why scientists have developed a robotic head to do the job.