All posts tagged: robotics

Delicate robot hands know just how hard to squeeze

Delicate robot hands know just how hard to squeeze

Published by skeptic

A robotic hand with vibration sensors in the fingertips can grasp apples and oranges with just the right amount of force Anway S. Pimpalkar et al. (2024)/CC BY 4.0 A robotic hand inspired by human skin can sense how hard an object is with a single digit’s touch and work out how much force is needed to grip it before the rest of the hand closes its grasp. Gripping an object firmly enough to secure it, but softly enough that it doesn’t break, is something that humans learn as infants, but robots still struggle with. Source link

Microrobot swarms mimic ant-like feats of strength

Microrobot swarms mimic ant-like feats of strength

Published by skeptic

The sand-grain-sized robots work cooperatively, similar to ants Jeong Jae Wie et al. Swarms of tiny robots guided by magnetic fields can coordinate to act like ants, from packing together to form a floating raft to lifting objects hundreds of times their weight. About the size of a grain of sand, the microrobots could someday do jobs larger bots cannot, such as unblocking blood vessels and delivering drugs to specific locations inside the human body. Jeong Jae Wie at Hanyang University in South Korea and his colleagues made the tiny, cube-shaped robots using a mould and epoxy resin embedded with magnetic alloy. These small magnetic particles enable the microrobots to be “programmed” to form various configurations after being exposed to strong magnetic fields from certain angles. The bots can then be controlled by external magnetic fields to perform spins or other motions. This approach allowed the team to “efficiently and quickly produce hundreds to thousands of microrobots”, each with a magnetic profile designed for specific missions, says Wie. The researchers directed the microrobot swarms to cooperatively …

The best and weirdest photos of robots from 2024

The best and weirdest photos of robots from 2024

Published by skeptic

A 2D facial robot covered with living skin Takeuchi et al. This bizarre smiling face is made from living human skin cells, and its creators say it could one day be attached to a humanoid robot to help machines communicate more effectively. Grown on a collagen scaffold and placed on a 3D-printed resin base, the face contains ligament-like structures, which, like the tissue of real animals, give it a life-like strength and flexibility. However, it can’t currently survive long in the open air because it doesn’t have… Source link

AI-Powered Robots Can Be Tricked Into Acts of Violence

AI-Powered Robots Can Be Tricked Into Acts of Violence

Published by skeptic

In the year or so since large language models hit the big time, researchers have demonstrated numerous ways of tricking them into producing problematic outputs including hateful jokes, malicious code and phishing emails, or the personal information of users. It turns out that misbehavior can take place in the physical world, too: LLM-powered robots can easily be hacked so that they behave in potentially dangerous ways. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania were able to persuade a simulated self-driving car to ignore stop signs and even drive off a bridge, get a wheeled robot to find the best place to detonate a bomb, and force a four-legged robot to spy on people and enter restricted areas. “We view our attack not just as an attack on robots,” says George Pappas, head of a research lab at the University of Pennsylvania who helped unleash the rebellious robots. “Any time you connect LLMs and foundation models to the physical world, you actually can convert harmful text into harmful actions.” Pappas and his collaborators devised their attack by …

Swarms of cyborg cockroaches could be manufactured by robots

Swarms of cyborg cockroaches could be manufactured by robots

Published by skeptic

A cockroach with an electronic backpack can be steered remotely Courtesy of Hirotaka Sato, Nanyang Technological University A robotic arm that can automatically turn cockroaches into controllable cyborgs could be used to create swarms of biological robots for search missions. Hirotaka Sato at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and his colleagues have previously shown that groups of up to 20 Madagascar hissing cockroaches (Gromphadorhina portentosa) equipped with electronic backpacks can be steered across desert-like terrain. However, to be used in a real-world search-and-rescue mission, the team calculates that hundreds or thousands of cyborg insects would be needed. Source link

This robotic wheelchair can climb stairs

This robotic wheelchair can climb stairs

Published by skeptic

Korea’s Institute for Machinery and Materials unveiled a pretty cool robotic wheelchair this week. By creating a compliant wheel that conforms to the terrain around it, these engineers have created an early version of a wheelchair that can climb stairs and traverse rocky terrain. The wheel uses a “smart chain” structure, which means that a chain on the wheels attaches to spokes that change tension when confronted with changes in the terrain. The team says that this design was inspired by the surface tension properties of water droplets, which are rounded by gravity. On today’s TechCrunch Minute, we’re looking at how these wheels work. Source link

Nvidia’s DrEureka outperforms humans in training robotics systems

Nvidia’s DrEureka outperforms humans in training robotics systems

Published by skeptic

Discover how companies are responsibly integrating AI in production. This invite-only event in SF will explore the intersection of technology and business. Find out how you can attend here. Large language models (LLMs) can accelerate the training of robotics systems in super-human ways, according to a new study by scientists at Nvidia, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Texas, Austin. The study introduces DrEureka, a technique that can automatically create reward functions and randomization distributions for robotics systems. DrEureka stands for Domain Randomization Eureka. DrEureka only requires a high-level description of the target task and is faster and more efficient than human-designed rewards in transferring learned policies from simulated environments to the real world. The implications can be great for the fast-moving world of robotics, which has recently gotten a renewed boost from the advances in language and vision models. Sim-to-real transfer When designing robotics models for new tasks, a policy is usually trained in a simulated environment and deployed to the real world. The difference between simulation and real-world environments, referred to …

Amazon’s robot workforce more than doubles in three years

Amazon’s robot workforce more than doubles in three years

Published by skeptic

Amazon has significantly increased the number of robots working in its fulfilment centers, with the US tech and e-commerce giant also claiming to be the world’s largest manufacturer of industrial robots.  A report from Business Insider has indicated robot numbers have spiked from 350,000 in 2021 to 750,000 by the middle of 2023. Amazon has several different robots at its disposal to deploy as part of its relentless and high-volume operations to sort customer orders. Robotic arms, called Robin and Sparrow, were brought into service at the company’s Robotics Innovation Hub, near Boston after the full design and manufacture process was completed in-house. Robin was described as “one of the most complex stationary robot arm systems Amazon has ever built”, assisting in different stages to scan and sort packages for dispatch, whilst Sparrow is a state-of-the-art robot that streamlines the fulfilment process. The company also benefits from the Proteus and Hercules robot models which can move containers, complemented by its Sequoia robotic system which goes further to sort and shift containers around to reduce the …

Nvidia and Alphabet’s Intrinsic aim to revolutionize next-gen robotics

Nvidia and Alphabet’s Intrinsic aim to revolutionize next-gen robotics

Published by skeptic

Discover how companies are responsibly integrating AI in production. This invite-only event in SF will explore the intersection of technology and business. Find out how you can attend here. Nvidia and Alphabet’s Intrinsic have teamed up to show off advancements in robotic grasping and industrial scalability. The companies said that the landscape of robotics will further change with the integration of new AI and platform technologies. At the Automate trade show in Chicago this week, Intrinsic is unveiling advances in robotic grasping and industrial scalability, powered by Nvidia’s Isaac Manipulator and AI capabilities. Isaac Manipulator, introduced by Nvidia at GTC 2024 in March, represents a milestone in industrial automation. It comprises foundation models and GPU-accelerated libraries designed to facilitate scalable and repeatable workflows for dynamic manipulation tasks. These foundation models, based on transformer deep learning architecture, enable robots to perceive and make decisions autonomously, akin to human-like understanding. The collaboration between Nvidia and Intrinsic demonstrates the potential for a universally applicable robotic-grasping skill to work seamlessly across various grippers, environments, and objects. Wendy Tan White, …