All posts tagged: robots

Tiny insect-like robot can flip, loop and hover for up to 15 minutes

Tiny insect-like robot can flip, loop and hover for up to 15 minutes

Published by skeptic

A tiny drone powered by soft muscle-like actuators Kevin Chen An insect-inspired robot that only weighs as much as a raisin can perform acrobatics and fly for much longer than any previous insect-sized drone without falling apart. For tiny flying robots to make nimble manoeuvres, they need to be lightweight and agile but also capable of withstanding large forces. Such forces mean that most tiny robots can only fly for around 20 seconds before breaking, which makes it difficult to collect enough data to properly calibrate and test the robots’ flying abilities. Now, Suhan Kim at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his colleagues have developed an insect-like flying robot about the size of a postage stamp that can execute acrobatic manoeuvres, such as double flips or tracing an infinity sign, and also hover in the air for up to 15 minutes without failing. Kim and his team adapted the design from a previous flying robot, but they made the joints more resilient by having them connect across a larger part of the robot than …

Plant and fungi parts level up biohybrid robots

Plant and fungi parts level up biohybrid robots

Published by skeptic

action potential: A brief change in the electrical potential on the surface of a cell, especially of a nerve or muscle cell. It happens when the cell is stimulated. This triggers the release of an electrical impulse.  agriculture: The growth of plants, animals or fungi for human needs, including food, fuel, chemicals and medicine.  cell: (in biology) The smallest structural and functional unit of an organism. Typically too small to see with the unaided eye, it consists of a watery fluid surrounded by a membrane or wall. Depending on their size, animals are made of anywhere from thousands to trillions of cells. Most organisms, such as yeasts, molds, bacteria and some algae, are composed of only one cell.   chemical: A substance formed from two or more atoms that unite (bond) in a fixed proportion and structure. For example, water is a chemical made when two hydrogen atoms bond to one oxygen atom. Its chemical formula is H2O. Chemical also can be an adjective to describe properties of materials that are the result of various reactions …

Training robots in the AI-powered industrial metaverse

Training robots in the AI-powered industrial metaverse

Published by skeptic

For example, Siemens’ SIMATIC Robot Pick AI expands on this vision of adaptability, transforming standard industrial robots—once limited to rigid, repetitive tasks—into complex machines. Trained on synthetic data—virtual simulations of shapes, materials, and environments—the AI prepares robots to handle unpredictable tasks, like picking unknown items from chaotic bins, with over 98% accuracy. When mistakes happen, the system learns, improving through real-world feedback. Crucially, this isn’t just a one-robot fix. Software updates scale across entire fleets, upgrading robots to work more flexibly and meet the rising demand for adaptive production. Another example is the robotics firm ANYbotics, which generates 3D models of industrial environments that function as digital twins of real environments. Operational data, such as temperature, pressure, and flow rates, are integrated to create virtual replicas of physical facilities where robots can train. An energy plant, for example, can use its site plans to generate simulations of inspection tasks it needs robots to perform in its facilities. This speeds the robots’ training and deployment, allowing them to perform successfully with minimal on-site setup. Simulation also …

Nvidia’s ‘Cosmos’ AI Helps Humanoid Robots Navigate the World

Nvidia’s ‘Cosmos’ AI Helps Humanoid Robots Navigate the World

Published by skeptic

Nvidia announced today it’s releasing a family of foundational AI models called Cosmos that can be used to train humanoids, industrial robots, and self-driving cars. While language models learn how to generate text by training on copious amounts of books, articles, and social media posts, Cosmos is designed to generate images and 3D models of the physical world. During a keynote presentation at the annual CES conference in Las Vegas, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang showed examples of Cosmos being used to simulate activities inside of warehouses. Cosmos was trained on 20 million hours of real footage of “humans walking, hands moving, manipulating things,” Jensen said. “It’s not about generating creative content, but teaching the AI to understand the physical world.” Researchers and startups hope that these kinds of foundational models could give robots used in factories and homes more sophisticated capabilities. Cosmos can, for example, generate realistic video footage of boxes falling from shelves inside a warehouse, which can be used to train a robot to recognize accidents. Users can also fine-tune the models using …

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

Robotic pigeon reveals how birds fly without a vertical tail fin

Robotic pigeon reveals how birds fly without a vertical tail fin

Published by skeptic

A pigeon-inspired robot has solved the mystery of how birds fly without the vertical tail fins that human-designed aircraft rely on. Its makers say the prototype could eventually lead to passenger aircraft with less drag, reducing fuel consumption. Tail fins, also known as vertical stabilisers, allow aircraft to turn from side to side and help avoid changing direction unintentionally. Some military planes, such as the Northrop B-2 Spirit, are designed without a tail fin because it makes them less visible to radar. Instead, they use flaps that create extra drag on just one side when needed, but this is an inefficient solution. Birds have no vertical fin and also don’t seem to deliberately create asymmetric drag. David Lentink at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and colleagues designed PigeonBot II (pictured below) to investigate how birds stay in control without such a stabiliser. PigeonBot II, a robot designed to mimic the flying techniques of birds Eric Chang The team’s previous model, built in 2020, flew by flapping its wings and changing their shape like …