Bots & Brains

By giving the touch-and-inspect method a smart update, SUTD researchers have designed a sensor for autonomous cleaning robots that can quantify the cleanliness of a given area.

Bad timing can botch a repetitive task that requires interaction between a robot and a human, a new study reports. Human participants in the study were less efficient at completing a pick-and-place task when their robot collaborators sent a signal to participants who were about to pick up an object, but fared much better when the robot provided the same cue shortly after participants had picked up an object and were about to put it down. 

Team Cerberus has won the DARPA Subterranean Robot Challenge. This event calls on teams to develop innovative robots that can explore diverse subterranean environments. The prize for the winning team is $2 000 000. The group is headed by an NTNU professor.

Blaize  announced a strategic cooperation agreement with Lidar solutions provider LeiShen, for in-depth cooperation on the integration of Lidar and AI functions in intelligence applications for autonomous operation across a range of automotive and smart city markets in China.

In the future, socially interactive robots could help seniors age in place or assist residents of long-term care facilities with their activities of daily living. But will people actually accept advice or instructions from a robot? A new study from University of Toronto Engineering suggests that the answer hinges on how that robot behaves. 

Scientists at Cornell University have created cell-size robots that can be powered and steered by ultrasound waves. Despite their tiny size, these micro-robotic swimmers –  whose movements were inspired by bacteria and sperm – could one day be a formidable new tool for targeted drug delivery.

Researchers at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology combined label-free microscopic imaging with artificial intelligence to quickly detect and classify SARS-CoV-2.

Funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities, the latest Small Starts project led by Abbas Rashidi of the University of Utah introduces a robust, deep neural network model for analyzing the automobile traffic impacts of construction zones.

The Indy Autonomous Challenge (IAC), the world’s first autonomous racecar competition at the famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS), has announced the IAC events currently scheduled for October 23, 2021, at IMS. Activities include the Autonomous Innovation Summit (invitation-only), bringing together global thought leaders and experts from industry, academia and government to discuss the status of the autonomous technology industry and explore ways to accelerate and amplify the benefits of an autonomous mobility future.

Flow Robotics, a Denmark-based producer of robots for automated liquid handling and the creator of the flowbot ONE, announced that it has established its North American Subsidiary, Flow Robotics, Inc., with operations in Princeton, NJ. The company’s first product, the flowbot ONE, is designed to transform how liquid handling responsibilities are performed in the laboratory by automating manual pipetting tasks.