Electro-hydraulic muscles are sometimes a viable alternative to electric motors in robot legs, according to researchers at Max Planck ETH Center for Learning Systems. This sort of electricity-to-movement transducer uses a liquid-filled bag with electrodes on opposite faces. A high potential difference across the electrodes pulls them together, squashing the liquid out of the way – and that action can ...
Artemy is a fully-automated tomato harvesting robot, according to its maker Certhon Build. “It uses AI to determine the ripeness of cherry truss tomatoes,” said the company. “Only ripe tomatoes are selected, and cherry truss tomato peduncles are cut using scissors attached to the top of the harvesting robot arm and stored in the loaded crates.” Harvesting continues under direct ...
Seeking more ways to move a robot through complex environments, researchers at Princeton University and North Carolina State University have turned to origami animated by thermally-activated bi-material strips. The body of the snake-like structure is folded from flat sheet using a Kresling pattern, named after Biruta Kresling, an architect that created a number of such folded structures during bio-inspired research ...
Northwestern University engineers have developed an artificial intelligence algorithm for smart robots that gather their own raw data. Dubbed ‘MaxDiff RL’ (maximum diffusion reinforcement learning), “the algorithm’s success lies in its ability to encourage robots to explore their environments as randomly as possible in order to gain a diverse set of experiences”, according to the university. “The algorithm works so ...
Researchers in Italy have made a robot that grows like a plant. Named FiloBot, it is the work of the Bioinspired Soft Robotics Laboratory at the Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia in Genova. FiloBot it builds its own stem-like body, up to several metres long, curving it permanently in response to light, dark or gravity, and it can also vary ...
Korean engineers and scientists have developed a soft gripper that can be used to lift 100kg, while weighing only 130g. The device is inspired by weaving and can be made at different sizes, always maintaining large ratio between gripping capacity and its own mass. “Utilising soft, flexible materials such as cloth, paper and silicone, soft robotic grippers acts like a ...
Cornell University has demonstrated a way to move an insect-like robot using mini-explosions. It has four hollow disc-like feet with elastomer membranes across the open end, like shallow inverted drums. Methane and oxygen are plumbed into the feet from remote reservoirs, and these gasses are ignited with electrical sparks, causing the membranes to deform – more or less depending on ...
Sony has created a 61Mpixel interchangeable lens camera for professionals with industrial applications, such as those using drones for inspection, investigation, surveying or mapping. ILX-LR1, as it will be called, is box-shaped and measures 100 x 74 x 42.4mm and 240g. M3 screw holes allow mounting on any of its six sides, and there is a 1/4-20 UNC threaded (‘tripod’) ...
Lexium is a cobot from Schneider Electric, intended to work alongside humans without a cage or other exclusion. Cobots – collaborative robots – need to be inherently safe around people, and as such need to be lightweight, move at moderate speed, not be too strong and have no sharp edges. “Traditional industrial robotic systems must be designed into processes from ...
Pondering movement over a wide range of terrains and through complex 3d worlds, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has come up with a snake-like robot called Eels – for Exobiology extant life surveyor. First prototyped in 2019 and now at Eels 1.0, it has 10 identical segments along its 4m body, which weighs 100kg. “There are dozens of textbooks about how ...
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