Meet the Autonomous Lab of the Future

To accelerate development of useful new materials, researchers at Berkeley Lab are building a new kind of automated lab that uses robots guided by artificial intelligence. A-Lab will rapidly test whether materials that have been computationally predicted can be made in reality. The lab’s vision is to use AI to discover materials of the future, starting with a focus on materials for batteries and energy storage.

Will a robot take my job? Notre Dame researcher says this view is overly pessimistic

With the impact of industrial robots on the U.S. labor markets in the past two decades, and an ever-increasing presence of machine-driven technology (such as artificial intelligence and ChatGPT), many employees have feared that one day robots will take their jobs. Not necessarily so, according to research recently published by Yong Suk Lee, an assistant professor in the University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs.

UNH Awarded $2.8 Million to Develop Robots to Care for People with Alzheimer’s and Dementia

Researchers at the University of New Hampshire will receive a five-year grant totaling $2.8 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop and test social assistive robots to aid in the care of individuals with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia in the comfort of their own homes.

Flawed AI Makes Robots Racist, Sexist

The work, led by Johns Hopkins University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and University of Washington researchers, is believed to be the first to show that robots loaded with an accepted and widely used model operate with significant gender and racial biases. The work is set to be presented and published this week at the 2022 Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency.

Teaching Robots to Think Like Us

In Applied Physics Letters, researchers outline how a robot could be taught to navigate through a maze by electrically stimulating a culture of brain nerve cells connected to the machine. These nerve cells were grown from living cells and acted as the physical reservoir for the computer to construct coherent signals. These findings suggest goal-directed behavior can be generated without any additional learning by sending disturbance signals to an embodied system.

Peachy Robot: A Glimpse into the Peach Orchard of the Future

Researchers are developing a robot that utilizes deep learning to automate certain aspects of the peach cultivation process, which could be a boon for many Georgia peach farms grappling with a shortage of workers. The self-navigating robot uses an embedded 3D camera to determine which trees need to be pruned or thinned, and removes the branches or peaches using a claw-like device attached to its arm.

Underwater robot offers new insight into mid-ocean “twilight zone”

An innovative underwater robot known as Mesobot is providing researchers with deeper insight into the vast mid-ocean region known as the “twilight zone.” Capable of tracking and recording high-resolution images of slow-moving and fragile zooplankton, gelatinous animals, and particles, Mesobot greatly expands scientists’ ability to observe creatures in their mesopelagic habitat with minimal disturbance. This advance in engineering will enable greater understanding of the role these creatures play in transporting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to the deep sea, as well as how commercial exploitation of twilight zone fisheries might affect the marine ecosystem.

Robots learn faster with quantum technology

Artificial intelligence is part of our modern life by enabling machines to learn useful processes such as speech recognition and digital personal assistants. A crucial question for practical applications is how fast such intelligent machines can learn. An experiment at the University of Vienna has answered this question, showing that quantum technology enables a speed-up in the learning process.

‘Chaotic’ Way to Create Insectlike Gaits for Robots

Researchers in Japan and Italy are embracing chaos and nonlinear physics to create insectlike gaits for tiny robots — complete with a locomotion controller to provide a brain-machine interface. Biology and physics are permeated by universal phenomena fundamentally grounded in nonlinear physics, and it inspired the researchers’ work. In the journal Chaos, the group describes using a system of three nonlinear differential equations as a building block for central pattern generators to control the gait of a robotic insect.

This ‘squidbot’ jets around and takes pics of coral and fish

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have built a squid-like robot that can swim untethered, propelling itself by generating jets of water. The robot carries its own power source inside its body. It can also carry a sensor, such as a camera, for underwater exploration. The researchers detail their work in a recent issue of Bioinspiration and Biomimetics.

Robots to Help Children Touch the Outside World

A team of University of California researchers is working to improve telepresence robots and the algorithms that drive them to help children with disabilities stay connected to their classmates, teachers and communities. The effort is funded by a $1 million grant from the National Robotics Initiative at the National Science Foundation.

‘SlothBot in the Garden’ Demonstrates Hyper-Efficient Conservation Robot

For the next several months, visitors to the Atlanta Botanical Garden will be able to observe the testing of a new high-tech tool in the battle to save some of the world’s most endangered species. SlothBot, a slow-moving and energy-efficient robot that can linger in the trees to monitor animals, plants, and the environment below, will be tested near the Garden’s popular Canopy Walk.

Jitterbug: Roaches and robots shake it to transition between movements in tricky terrain

By chasing cockroaches through an obstacle course and studying their movements, the Johns Hopkins engineers that brought you the cockroach robot and the snake robot discovered that animals’ movement transitions corresponded to overcoming potential energy barriers and that they can jitter around to traverse obstacles in complex terrain.

Robots vs. #COVID19: @JohnsHopkins expert available to discuss how robots may soon be used to disinfect operating rooms, resume manufacturing, take temperatures and more.

In a new Science Robotics editorial published today, experts discuss the potential use of robots to combat COVID-19 by decreasing risks posed to humans, safely resuming halted manufacturing and making teleoperations more efficient. Much of the work required in combatting…

Robot Uses Artificial Intelligence and Imaging to Draw Blood

Rutgers engineers have created a tabletop device that combines a robot, artificial intelligence and near-infrared and ultrasound imaging to draw blood or insert catheters to deliver fluids and drugs. Their research results, published in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence, suggest that autonomous systems like the image-guided robotic device could outperform people on some complex medical tasks.

New Robot Does Superior Job Sampling Blood

In the future, robots could take blood samples, benefiting patients and healthcare workers alike. A Rutgers-led team has created a blood-sampling robot that performed as well or better than people, according to the first human clinical trial of an automated blood drawing and testing device.

Rutgers Experts Available to Discuss How Robots Enable Chemical Exposure Assessment

New Brunswick, N.J. (Jan. 27, 2020) – Robots can be programmed to perform tasks such as painting to generate exposure data on potentially harmful contaminants, according to a study in the Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology that was co-led…