Browse Topic: Robotics
In an era where technology increasingly merges with healthcare to enhance patient outcomes, a groundbreaking study conducted by Fuyang Yu and his colleagues introduces an innovative approach to lower limb rehabilitation. Their research, published in Cyborg Bionic Systems, outlines the development of a lower limb rehabilitation robot designed to significantly improve the safety and effectiveness of gait training through a novel method based on human-robot interaction force measurement.
Innovators at NASA Johnson Space Center have developed additively manufactured thermal protection system (AMTPS) comprised of two printable heat shield material formulations. These formulations are directly applied by 3D printer or other robotic extrusion system and bonded to a spacecraft to devise a heat shield suitable for atmospheric entry. This technology could significantly decrease heat shield or thermal protection system (TPS) fabrication cost and time.
Soft robots, medical devices and implants, and next-generation drug delivery methods could soon be guided with magnetism — thanks to a metal-free magnetic gel developed by researchers at the University of Michigan and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, Germany.
Ready for that long-awaited summer vacation? First, you’ll need to pack all the items required for your trip into a suitcase, making sure everything fits securely without crushing anything fragile. Because humans possess strong visual and geometric reasoning skills, this is usually a straightforward problem, even if it may take a bit of finagling to squeeze everything in.
Animals like bats, whales, and insects have long used acoustic signals for communication and navigation. Now, an international team of scientists have taken a page from nature’s playbook to model micro-sized robots that use sound waves to coordinate into large swarms that exhibit intelligent-like behavior. The robot groups could one day carry out complex tasks like exploring disaster zones, cleaning up pollution, or performing medical treatments from inside the body, according to team lead Igor Aronson, Huck Chair Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Chemistry, and Mathematics at Penn State.
While traditional industrial robots have long been the workhorses of manufacturing, excelling at pre-programmed, repetitive tasks within controlled, isolated environments, the landscape of automation is shifting. Collaborative robots (cobots), robotic systems designed to interact physically and safely with humans in a shared workspace, are vital not only for future industrial endeavors, such as Industry 5.0, but also for enhancing safety and efficiency across various sectors, including healthcare, agriculture, logistics, and even consumer service applications. Their ability to quickly adapt to changes in a production process or tool failures without compromising quality is a significant advancement.
In an office in Bordeaux, the Pollen Robotics teams are working on an ambitious mission: to imagine and advance useful robotics for humans. Their flagship creation, Reachy, combines accessibility, innovation, and open-source collaboration. But first, let’s go back to where it all started.
At UC Berkeley, researchers in Sergey Levine’s Robotic AI and Learning Lab eyed a table where a tower of 39 Jenga blocks stood perfectly stacked. Then a white-and-black robot, its single limb doubled over like a hunched-over giraffe, zoomed toward the tower, brandishing a black leather whip. Through what might have seemed to a casual viewer like a miracle of physics, the whip struck in precisely the right spot to send a single block flying out from the stack while the rest of the tower remained structurally sound.
ABB Robotics is enabling faster, safer, and more cost-effective rebuilding in areas devastated by the 2025 Southern Californian wildfires through a collaboration with Cosmic Buildings — a leading construction technology company that uses proprietary mobile robotic microfactories. After the wildfires burned thousands of acres, destroying homes, infrastructure, and natural habitats, this pioneering initiative will deploy the microfactory in Pacific Palisades, CA, to build modular structures onsite, offering a glimpse into the future of affordable housing construction.
A team of engineers has developed a low-cost, durable, highly-sensitive robotic ‘skin’ that can be added to robotic hands like a glove, enabling robots to detect information about their surroundings in a way that’s similar to humans.
Keshika Warnakula is a Senior Flight Mechanics Engineer at Syos Aerospace Limited and the winner of the 2025 Rising Stars Award Aerospace and Defense category. Syos Aerospace is based in Mount Maunganui, New Zealand, specializing in robotics engineering and the development of autonomous air, land, and sea vehicles. The company also has an office located in Fareham, UK, and was recently named New Zealand's “Hi-Tech Company Of the Year.”
As unmanned vehicular networks become more prevalent in civilian and defense applications, the need for robust security solutions grows in parallel. While ROS 2 offers a flexible platform for robotic operations, its security model lacks the adaptability required for dynamic trust management and proactive threat mitigation. To address these shortcomings, we propose a novel framework that integrates containerized ROS 2 nodes with Kubernetes-based orchestration, a dynamic trust management subsystem, and integrability with simulators for real-time and protocol-flexible network simulation. By embedding trust management directly within each ROS 2 container and leveraging Kubernetes, we overcome ROS 2’s security limitations by enabling real-time monitoring and machine learning-driven anomaly detection (via an autoencoder trained on custom data), facilitating the isolation or removal of suspicious nodes. Additionally, Kubernetes policies allow seamless scaling and enforcement of trust-based
Employment of Robotic and Autonomous Systems requires a different paradigm of mission planning, one which considers not only the tasks to be performed by the RAS themselves but regards the flow of information to support the observability of the RAS by the operator. GTRI has developed an initial capability for mission planning of mixed motive, heterogeneous, autonomous systems for management of macro level metrics that support the decision making of the operator or user during employment. The work is ongoing, extensible to additional capability sets, and modular to support integration of other autonomous capabilities.
Bearings are essential mechanical components that support external loads and facilitate rotational motion. With the increasing demand for high-performance applications in industries such as semiconductors, aerospace, and robotics, the need for accurate and robust performance evaluation has intensified. Traditionally, bearing performance has been assessed using static or quasi-static theoretical approaches. However, these methods are limited in their ability to capture time-dependent behaviors, which are critical in real-world applications. In this study, a rigid body dynamics analysis was proposed to evaluate the time-dependent behavior of bearings. The methodology was first applied to a deep groove ball bearing, and the results were compared with those obtained from bearing theory to validate the approach. Subsequently, the method was extended to an automotive wheel bearing, and the time-dependent contact angles and ball loads were analyzed under axial and radial loading conditions
EPFL researchers have developed a customizable soft robotic system that uses compressed air to produce shape changes, vibrations, and other haptic, or tactile, feedback in a variety of configurations. The device holds significant promise for applications in virtual reality, physical therapy, and rehabilitation.
The automation of labor-intensive picking and planting operations is having an immediate impact in the agricultural indutry. In its simplest form, robotic automation can reduce the labor and soil disturbance while enabling organic soil cover and increasing species diversification through precision approaches to planting, weeding, and spraying. With this, pesticides and fertilizers can be applied in a more targeted way, and with machinery visiting fields more frequently, earlier and more targeted intervention can occur before pests become established. Small, Mobile, and Autonomous Agricultural Robots identifies issues that need to be resolved fo for this technology to thrive, including improving methods of acquiring and labeling training data to facilitate more accurate models for specific applications. It also discusses concepts such as general-purpose mechanical platforms for use as carriers of agricultural automation systems with high stability, positional accuracy, and variable
Warehouse logistics increasingly rely on automation in the form of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), scanners, complex conveyors, and fleet management systems for seamless operation, but it’s the ubiquitous, century-old pallet that remains the critical support system. Make no mistake, if even one of those thousands of pallets is defective, it can create havoc in the warehouse.
The wealth of information provided by our senses that allows our brain to navigate the world around us is remarkable. Touch, smell, hearing, and a strong sense of balance are crucial to making it through what to us seem like easy environments such as a relaxing hike on a weekend morning.
Specialized robots that can both fly and drive typically touch down on land before attempting to transform and drive away. But when the landing terrain is rough, these robots sometimes get stuck and are unable to continue operating. Now a team of Caltech engineers has developed a real-life Transformer that has the “brains” to morph in midair, allowing the dronelike robot to smoothly roll away and begin its ground operations without pause. The increased agility and robustness of such robots could be particularly useful for commercial delivery systems and robotic explorers.
San Francisco startup Canvas has developed a robotic system handling one of the most labor-intensive trades in construction: drywall finishing. Leveraging robotic arms from Universal Robots, Canvas has built a machine that reduces the usual five to seven days of spraying and sanding the drywall to just around two days for both Level 4 and Level 5 finishes.
A human clearing junk out of an attic can often guess the contents of a box simply by picking it up and giving it a shake, without the need to see what’s inside. Researchers from MIT, Amazon Robotics, and the University of British Columbia have taught robots to do something similar.
Ready for that long-awaited summer vacation? First, you’ll need to pack all the items required for your trip into a suitcase, making sure everything fits securely without crushing anything fragile. Because humans possess strong visual and geometric reasoning skills, this is usually a straightforward problem, even if it may take a bit of finagling to squeeze everything in.
Researchers have created a light-powered soft robot that can carry loads through the air along established tracks, similar to cable cars or aerial trams. The soft robot operates autonomously, can climb slopes at angles of up to 80°, and can carry loads up to 12 times its weight.
Imagine a robot that can walk, without electronics, and only with the addition of a cartridge of compressed gas, right off the 3D printer. It can also be printed in one go, from one material.
Not a traditional university lab, Harvard University’s Move Lab employs professional engineers, product developers, and academics who work across disciplines to bring research innovations to market. The lab is focused on human performance enhancement to protect people’s physical ability to guard against injury, extend their abilities beyond the limits of advancing age, and restore them to people who have lost them. They have developed wearable solutions that support functional movements and allow impaired individuals to more easily interact with their environment.
Engineers have designed robots that crawl, swim, fly, and even slither like a snake, but no robot can hold a candle to a squirrel, which can parkour through a thicket of branches, leap across perilous gaps and execute pinpoint landings on the flimsiest of branches.
For the team at SmartCap, building top-notch gear for outdoor adventurers isn’t just a business — it’s a passion driven by their own love for the wild. But as demand for their rugged, modular truck caps soared after their move to North America in 2022, they hit a snag: How do you ramp up production without sacrificing the meticulous quality you are known for, all while navigating a tough labor market? Their answer? A bold step into the world of intelligent automation, teaming up with GrayMatter Robotics, and employing the company’s innovative Scan&Sand™ system.
Researchers have developed a tiny magnetic robot that can take 3D scans from deep within the body and could revolutionize early cancer detection.
A team of UCLA engineers and their colleagues have developed a new design strategy and 3D printing technique to build robots in one single step. The breakthrough enabled the entire mechanical and electronic systems needed to operate a robot to be manufactured all at once by a new type of 3D printing process for engineered active materials with multiple functions (also known as metamaterials). Once 3D printed, a “meta-bot” will be capable of propulsion, movement, sensing, and decision-making.
Swimming robots play a crucial role in mapping pollution, studying aquatic ecosystems, and monitoring water quality in sensitive areas such as coral reefs or lake shores. However, many devices rely on noisy propellers, which can disturb or harm wildlife. The natural clutter in these environments — including plants, animals, and debris — also poses a challenge to robotic swimmers.
It’s a game a lot of us played as children — and maybe even later in life: unspooling measuring tape to see how far it would extend before bending. But to engineers at the University of California San Diego, this game was an inspiration, suggesting that measuring tape could become a great material for a robotic gripper.
Repartly, a startup based in Guetersloh, Germany, is using ABB’s collaborative robots to repair and refurbish electronic circuit boards in household appliances. Three GoFa cobots handle the sorting, visual inspection and precise soldering tasks enabling the company to enhance efficiency and maintain high quality standards.
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