The discovery of an ancient lake bed beneath the Perseverance rover’s location on Mars could mean the robotic scout has already scraped up microbial fossils. But we won’t know for sure until we fetch the sample.
BMW has signed an unprecedented deal with the robotics firm Figure to bring general-purpose humanoid robots into its factories.
‘Sleeper agents’ seem benign during testing but behave differently once deployed. And methods to stop them aren’t working.
This can free humans from taking on those tedious — and potentially dangerous — jobs, but it also means manufacturers need to build or buy a new robot every time they find a new task they want to automate.
General purpose robots — ones that can do many tasks — would be far more useful, but developing a bot with anywhere near the versatility of a human worker has thus far proven out of reach.
Continue reading “See the humanoid robots that will build new BMWs” »
Compared to robots, human bodies are flexible, capable of fine movements, and can convert energy efficiently into movement. Drawing inspiration from human gait, researchers from Japan crafted a two-legged biohybrid robot by combining muscle tissues and artificial materials. Published on January 26 in the journal Matter, this method allows the robot to walk and pivot.
“Research on biohybrid robots, which are a fusion of biology and mechanics, is recently attracting attention as a new field of robotics featuring biological function,” says corresponding author Shoji Takeuchi of the University of Tokyo, Japan. “Using muscle as actuators allows us to build a compact robot and achieve efficient, silent movements with a soft touch.”
Continue reading “Scientists design a two-legged robot powered by muscle tissue” »
Paper page: https://huggingface.co/papers/2401.14403 https://open-world-mobilemanip.github.io/ Deploying robots in open-ended unstructured environments such as homes has been a long-standing research problem.
The Rail Bus, a pioneering mode of transportation originating in Zhuzhou, China, is a groundbreaking discovery. Introduced by the Chinese manufacturer CRRC, this self-driving vehicle, resembling a train but without tracks, completed its inaugural journey in 2017. The Rail Bus seeks to revolutionise traditional concepts of buses, trains, and trams. The design of the Rail Bus was presented to the public in June 2023, and remarkably, within a span of fewer than five months, CRRC initiated testing on October 30, 2017. Covering a 3-kilometer route with stops at four stations in Zhuzhou, this marked a significant milestone in transportation evolution.
