Among other characteristics, fleas are well known for their jumping ability because they are able to jump up to around 200 times of their own body length, making them the 2nd best jumper in the known world. Relying on previous joint development of Precision Urban Hopper robot, engineers from Boston Dynamics came up with Sand… »
A researcher from the University of Arizona has developed Tucson Explorer II (TEX II) – an autonomous robotic lake lander that could potentially be used to explore the lakes of liquid hydrocarbon known to exist on Saturn’s largest moon named Titan. The robot could be used in terrestrial applications such as search and rescue missions… »
As a part of DARPA’s Maximum Mobility and Manipulation (M3) program, with goal to create and demonstrate significant scientific and engineering advances in robot mobility and manipulation capabilities, engineers from Boston Dynamics developed Cheetah – a robot named after the animal it got inspired from that managed to beat the previous land speed record for… »
In one of our previous articles, we wrote about two ideas that employ robots building construction, but researchers from Cornell University came up with a different approach in a project named Machine Metabolism – Truss Structure Manipulation using Robots. The project involves a robotic system capable to break down modular elements and reuse them to… »
Engineers at Harvard University developed a new technique inspired by pop-up books which enables rapid fabrication of a broad range of electromechanical devices through layering and folding process. The method is also useful for parallel fabrication of Monolithic Bee (also known as “Mobee”) microrobots which rely on PARITy drivetrain we described in one of our… »
Although micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) could be very useful in search and rescue, exploration and environmental monitoring missions, due to their small size they still lack maneuverability. Johns Hopkins University (JHU) engineers are using high-speed video cameras to figure out how butterflies manage to fly with amazing grace and agility in order to improve maneuvering… »
Arizona State University researchers are using their automation, sensors, biotechnology, and systems expertise to develop Sensorbots – spherical robots equipped with biogeochemical sensors that are affordable enough to be deployed by the hundreds. Sensorbots will be used to monitor the ocean in the National Science Foundation’s Ocean Observatories Initiative named Regional Scale Nodes (RSN) project…. »
There are numerous examples in nature where ‘active touch’ plays a primary role in how an animal finds its way around and how it behaves. Inspired by the Etruscan shrew, one of the world’s tiniest mammals, researchers at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL) developed Shrewbot – the newest generation of a robots that use sophisticated… »
