Inspired by the swarming patterns of animals in nature, an aerospace engineering PhD student from the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia, is using biomimicry to develop an algorithm which simulates novel and chaotic flight formations of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The results could be used in order to improve their performance in marine… »

Development of snake-like technology underway at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory is moving the military toward sending more autonomous systems instead of Soldiers on search-and-rescue missions, a top priority in the most dangerous mission areas. Army researchers call it the Robotic Tentacle Manipulator, a developmental project that expands on snake robotics research introduced at Carnegie… »

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the U.S. Army Research Office awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to iRobot to create the flexible military robot. The maker of the Roomba and Scooba, along with University of Chicago researchers, develops the palm-size ChemBot as a mobile robot that can move over soft terrain and navigate through small… »