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.
Workers at Amazon fulfilment centres are under enormous pressure.
Robert Melen/Alamy
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.
Ghost Robotics Vision 60 Q-UGV.
US Space Force photo by Senior Airman Samuel Becker
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.
Videos of humanoid robots dancing and performing backflips in the lab notwithstanding, robots that wash your dishes and fold your laundry are still years away. A roboticist explains why.
Diverging views on automated weapons systems could make it difficult for Australia and New Zealand to manage military ties at a delicate time in trans-Tasman relations.
Our interviews with ex-automotive workers reveal how economic change interrupts lives, casting people into new worlds of precarious work and long, indefinite journeys in search of security.
Up to 40% of all jobs now are tipped to be taken over by AI and robots in the next few decades. My grandmother, born on a farm almost a century ago, has some advice on how to cope.
Humanitarian groups have been calling for a ban on autonomous weapons.
Wolfgang Kumm/picture alliance via Getty Images
Sci-fi nightmares of a robot apocalypse aside, autonomous weapons are a very real threat to humanity. An expert on the weapons explains how the emerging arms race could be humanity’s last.
Robot and artificial intelligence are poised to increase their influences within our every day lives.
(Shutterstock)
Researchers used an old theory on vibrating plane wings to study how fish swim so well. They were able to double the swimming efficiency of their robotic fish over a range of speeds.
Flying fish use their fins both to swim and glide through the air.
Smithsonian Institution/Flickr
Fish fins are extremely flexible yet also strong. A special segmented fin design is the key to this useful combination of properties and could inspire new morphing materials.
Professor, School for the Future of Innovation in Society & School of Computing, Informatics and Decision Systems Engineering, Arizona State University