Researchers University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), Université de Montréal and Mila have recently developed a hierarchical reinforcement learning framework to improve the precision of quadrupedal robots in soccer shooting. This framework, introduced in a...
Robotics
Aquabots: Ultrasoft liquid robots for biomedical and environmental applications
In recent years, roboticists have developed a wide variety of robotic systems with different body structures and capabilities. Most of these robots are either made of hard materials, such as metals, or soft materials, such as silicon and rubbery materials.
Using tactile sensors and machine learning to improve how robots manipulate fabrics
In recent years, roboticists have been trying to improve how robots interact with different objects found in real-world settings. While some of their efforts yielded promising results, the manipulation skills of most existing robotic systems still lag behinds those of...
The Wheelbot: A symmetric unicycle with jumping reaction wheels
Researchers at RWTH Aachen University in the team of Prof. Sebastian Trimpe and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) Stuttgart have recently developed the Wheelbot a symmetric reaction wheel unicycle that can autonomously jump onto its wheels from...
A flexible, rod-driven soft robot for biomedical applications
Soft robots that can complete tasks with high efficiency, accuracy and precision could have numerous valuable applications. For instance, they could be introduced in medical settings, helping doctors to carry out complex surgical procedures or assisting elderly and...
A new explainable AI paradigm that could enhance human-robot collaboration
Artificial intelligence (AI) methods have become increasingly advanced over the past few decades, attaining remarkable results in many real-world tasks. Nonetheless, most existing AI systems do not share their analyses and the steps that led to their predictions with...
A bartending robot that can engage in personalized interactions with humans
A widely discussed application of social robots that has so far been rarely tested in real-world settings is their use as bartenders in cafés, cocktail bars and restaurants. While many roboticists have been trying to develop systems that can effectively prepare drinks...
Allowing social robots to learn relations between users’ routines and their mood
Social robots, robots that can interact with humans and assist them in their daily lives, are gradually being introduced in numerous real-world settings. These robots could be particularly valuable for helping older adults to complete everyday tasks more autonomously,...
DayDreamer: An algorithm to quickly teach robots new behaviors in the real world
Training robots to complete tasks in the real-world can be a very time-consuming process, which involves building a fast and efficient simulator, performing numerous trials on it, and then transferring the behaviors learned during these trials to the real world. In...
Enhancing the safety of autonomous vehicles in critical scenarios
Researchers at Ulm University in Germany have recently developed a new framework that could help to make self-driving cars safer in urban and highly dynamic environments. This framework, presented in a paper pre-published on arXiv, is designed to identify potential...