Disabled people are experts in using – and designing – assistive technologies. They have lessons to offer everyone about keeping control when help is offered.
New research has found that the two ‘fingers’ on the tip of an elephant’s trunk exert different forces. The finding will be used to improve the abilities of bio-inspired robots.
Robots often have a hard time navigating through debris, but robots designed based on worms and snakes could move around obstacles faster, thanks to an idea called mechanical intelligence.
Cotton is one of the world’s largest crops and is harvested with large, heavy machines. Robotic harvesting could yield higher-quality cotton with less damage to plants and soil.
Humanoid robots tend to be white or resemble white people. Here’s why this is a problem and what social scientists, designers and engineers can do about it.
Asking users the dollar value of the costs and benefits of walking in exoskeletons is a better way of finding out how users feel about them than measuring calories saved.
Dramatic improvements in computing, sensors and submersible engineering are making it possible for researchers to ramp up data collection from the oceans while also keeping people out of harm’s way.
Robots are already carrying out tasks in clinics, classrooms and warehouses. Designing robots that are more receptive to human needs could help make them more useful in many contexts.
Ryan H. Lee, University of California, Los Angeles
Computer-based neural networks can learn to do tasks. A new type of material, called a mechanical neural network, applies similar ideas to a physical structure.
The sentient, murderous humanoid robot is a complete fiction, and may never become reality. But that doesn’t mean we’re safe from autonomous weapons – they are already here.
Professor, School for the Future of Innovation in Society & School of Computing, Informatics and Decision Systems Engineering, Arizona State University