robots

Researchers from Tohoku University and the National Institute of Technology, Hachinohe College in Japan have pulled the wraps off a new firefighting robot that looks like a very long snake. This robot can get itself into buildings to help put out flames using streams of water that squirt out in multiple directions. Those streams of water allow the robot to float off the floor on the power of the high-pressure streams.

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A group of researchers is working on an insect-sized flying robot that they believe could help with all sorts of tasks from finding gas leaks to surveying crops. Rather than having propellers that push them like an airplane or rotors like a helicopter, these tiny robots fly around by flapping wings like an insect. The small size of the robot flying machines makes them cheaper to produce and able to slip into tight spots that larger drones couldn’t access.

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Boston Dynamics is upgrading from merely terrifying us with the sight of its lifelike robots to actually selling them, with sales of its dog-like 'bot expected to start next year. The company is currently owned by SoftBank, which has already launched robots of its own, though none quite as advanced as those Boston Dynamics has developed over the years.

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Researchers around the world are working on soft robotic systems that will allow robots to pick up items that are irregularly shaped and difficult for traditional robots to handle. Disney Research is working on soft robotics and has a new video and some detail on the system it has created. The hardware is designed to allow physical human-robot integration.

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NASA recently funded a new potential future way to explore the Red Planet: Marsbee, an insect-like flying robot that could operate in swarms with a rover serving as a base station. Marsbees are described as about the size of a bumblebee with wings like you'd find on a cicada; they don't need much energy and can be recharged from a rover that doubles as a communication center.

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When you play PUBG Mobile, you're not playing JUST other PUBG Mobile gamers. Instead, as we've found, some players aren't playing on their mobile devices. Other players aren't players at all - they're bots. It would appear that the game is only partially populated by real mobile users. The rest are big fat liars, cheats, and artificial intelligence.

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The challenge for designers of robots that walk on two legs like humans is that these bipedal robots tend to fall over. Humans are very good at balancing, but robots not so much. A new robot has been designed at the Guangdong University of Technology that is much more stable than other bipedal robots out there thanks to one unique feature.

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A new XPRIZE competition promises part of a $10m bounty for developing a real-life avatar, a robotic stand-in for humans that could virtually take us to distant or perilous locations. Announced at SXSW 2018 today, the new XPRIZE is open to participants globally, though the challenge isn't going to be easy to beat.

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Robots in the workforce is a controversial topic. While machines come with many benefits -- they never get sick and only need breaks for maintenance, for example -- they come with a big downside: the potential to take over "unskilled" jobs, leaving many without work. One of those jobs is burger flipping, the stereotypical example of a position at risk. Here to fill the role is Flippy, a burger-flipping robot that has started work.

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Back in 2015, the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) created a robot called Walk-Man to participate in the DARPA Robotics Challenge. The researchers at the IIT have been working on improving that robot ever since. The latest version of Walk-Man is at its final validation phase and has received a big update to help it prepare to fight disasters in the future.

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Earlier this month, Boston Dynamics demonstrated a version of its SpotMini robot that contains an arm and claw/clamp on the end of the armature. The robot was demonstrated opening a door and walking through, but that was too simple of a task, apparently. This time around, the robotics company has demonstrated the robot actively resisting an aggressive human who is getting in the way.

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NASA's Curiosity rover has called Mars home for years and it's work isn't done yet. The rover will soon start yet another investigative mission, this time climbing the Red Planet's Mount Sharp, a mountain located in the Gale Crater. Ahead of starting its climb, though, Curiosity paused in the crater's rim to snap a selfie with the mountain featured in the background.

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