Researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder's ATLAS Institute have recently developed a swarm of little shape-changing robots, called ShapeBots. These self-transformable robots, presented in a paper pre-published on arXiv, can change both their individual and...
Robotics
Skinflow: A soft robotic skin based on liquid transmission
Researchers at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory and the University of Bristol have recently developed a new soft robotic skin-like sensor that is based on fluidic transmission. This sensor, presented at the second IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics...
Solving a Rubik’s Cube with a dexterous hand
In recent years, a growing number of researchers have explored the use of robotic arms or dexterous hands to solve a variety of everyday tasks. While many of them have successfully tackled simple tasks, such as grasping or basic manipulation, complex tasks that...
Parasitic Body: A virtual reality system to study the collection of visual feedback from robotic arms
Recent advancements in robotics have enabled the development of systems to assist humans in a variety of tasks. A type of robotic system that has gained substantial popularity over the past few years is wearable robotic arms remotely operated by a third party.
PoseRBPF: A new particle filter for 6D object pose tracking
Researchers at NVIDIA, University of Washington, Stanford University, and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have recently developed a Rao-Blackwellized particle filter for 6-D pose tracking, called PoseRBPF. The approach can effectively estimate the 3-D...
MobiKa: A low-cost mobile robot that can assist people in a variety of settings
Researchers at Fraunhofer IPA, in Stuttgart, Germany, have recently developed MobiKa, a low-cost, mobile robot capable of two-modal (voice and text) interactions with humans. Their robot, presented in a paper pre-published on arXiv, could be particularly useful for...
Monitoring human physiological responses to improve interactions with robots
Researchers from the Century Mold Collaborative Robotics Laboratory (CMCRL) at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in New York have recently developed a new framework for monitoring human physiological responses while users are collaborating with a robot to...
New designs for jumping and wing-flapping microrobots
Researchers at the University of California (UC) Berkeley have recently designed two insect-scale microbots, one that jumps and another that flaps its artificial wings. These robot designs, presented in two papers pre-published on arXiv, mimic real biological...
Enhancing the vertical mobility of six-legged robot RHex using microspines
A team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University has recently proposed a method to improve the vertical mobility of a renowned hexapod robot. Their approach, presented in a paper pre-published on arXiv, entails the addition of microspines to RHex, an existing...
Evaluating robots as teachers or partners in language learning exercises
Researchers at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Sweden have carried out a study exploring the effects of using physical robots to assist humans during vocabulary learning exercises. The department of Speech, Music and Hearing at KTH specializes in...