movement

An innovative bimanual robot displays tactile sensitivity close to human-level dexterity using AI to inform its actions.

Researchers from Japan and Vietnam have introduced an innovative approach to control pneumatic artificial muscle (PAM) systems. As PAMs increasingly mimic human-like movements, finding accurate control mechanisms has become paramount for applications in industries such as robotics, rehabilitation, and prosthetics.

A team of physicists, engineers, and mathematicians at the Georgia Institute of Technology are using the movement of centipedes to develop a new theory of multilegged locomotion. They created many-legged robotic models, discovering the robot with redundant legs could move across uneven surfaces without any additional sensing or control technology as the theory predicted.

Humans naturally perform numerous complex tasks. These include sitting down, picking something up from a table, and pushing a cart. These activities involve various movements and require multiple contacts, which makes it difficult to program robots to perform them.

Celera Motion, a business unit of Novanta, announced its launch of what it claims is the world’s smallest servo drives. The compact servo drives are designed for service robots, surgical robots, industrial grippers and lab automation applications.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science and the University of California, Berkeley, have designed a robotic system that enables a low-cost and relatively small legged robot to climb and descend stairs nearly its height; traverse rocky, slippery, uneven, steep and varied terrain; walk across gaps; scale rocks and curbs; and even operate in the dark. 

Researchers at North Carolina State University have created a ring-shaped soft robot capable of crawling across surfaces when exposed to elevated temperatures or infrared light. The researchers have demonstrated that these “ringbots” are capable of pulling a small payload across the surface – in ambient air or under water, as well as passing through a gap that is narrower than its ring size.

Celera Motion, a business unit of Novanta, announced the introduction of the world’s smallest and, it claims, fastest servo drive.  The Everest S, the latest addition to the Everest Series, is about 30% smaller than its predecessor, making it the world’s smallest servo drive. It also delivers bus latency reduced to 1 cycle, which according to Celera makes Everest S the fastest servo drive on the market today.  

A four-legged robot trained through artificial intelligence has learned the same lesson as the Apollo astronauts – that jumping can be the best way to move around on the surface the Moon. An update on LEAP (Legged Exploration of the Aristarchus Plateau), a mission concept study funded by ESA to explore some of the most challenging lunar terrains, has been presented at the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) 2022.

After several year of research and development Delft start-up IMSystems is ready to present its patented speed reducer to the market. This high precision gearbox uses rollers instead of gear teeth. At Automatica in Munich it will demonstrate its first product, a development kit for robot companies to test the system.