Robotics

Autonomous vehicles are said to be safer than human drivers – but would you trust a mushroom behind the wheel? A new kind of “biohybrid” robot moves in response to signals from the nervous system of a fungus.

A new materials technique that takes cues from Grandma's yarn bag and cutting-edge tech has the potential to automatically build whole furniture sets – and the fabric that covers them. Then, they can be unraveled to use again in a totally different way.

Nightmare fuel? Maybe – but in a historic moment for the dental profession, an AI-controlled autonomous robot has performed an entire procedure on a human patient for the first time, about eight times faster than a human dentist could do it.

People may joke about tight jeans being "spray-on pants," but On's new Cloudboom Strike LS is a spray-on running shoe. Its LightSpray production process is much faster than traditional methods, resulting in an ultra-lightweight finished product.

There are no humans working the new Xiaomi production lines – this new Smart Factory is 100% automated. Indeed, the company says the system is smart enough to diagnose and fix problems, as well as optimizing its own processes to "evolve by itself."

At this year’s World AI Conference, China released its Shanghai Declaration on Global AI Governance, official guidelines that call for countries to work together to ensure that the primary consideration of global AI development is the good of humanity.

Endiatx has begun clinical trials of its ingestible PillBot™, which will enable doctors to remotely examine the gastrointestinal tract of a patient over a zoom call.

Adults with attention-deficit/hyperactive disorder will know that it presents challenges that impact many aspects of daily life, including missed deadlines and forgotten appointments. This executive-function desktop friend is here to help.

Meal kit delivery services are proving to be quite popular, but … you still have to cook the ingredients yourself. The Chefee home robotic chef is intended to take things further, by actually preparing hot meals that are ready to eat when you get home from work.

ARX Robotics has just received €9 million from the NATO Innovation Fund to develop a series of robust unmanned ground vehicles. The modular design of the bots makes them capable of filling a variety of roles in the alliance's attack and defense systems.

In what sounds more like the opening scene from a B-grade sci-fi/horror flick, head transplant operations performed entirely by AI-robot surgeons could be coming to a hospital near you within a decade, if startup BrainBridge is to have its way.

It's a genuine joy watching Apollo-era astronauts bounce around on the lunar surface, and it's hysterically funny watching them fall over and struggle to get back up in their spacesuits. MIT wishes to rob us of this hilarity for future missions.