Innovation

Inspired by the biomechanics of cheetahs, researchers have developed a new type of soft robot that is capable of moving more quickly on a solid surfaces or in the water than previous generations of soft robots. The new soft robotics are also capable of grabbing objects delicately — or with sufficient strength to lift heavy objects. “Cheetahs are the fastest creatures on land, and they derive their speed and power from the flexing of their spines,” says Jie Yin, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at North Carolina…

One Robot makes cocktails from 25 bottles hanging upside-down from the ceiling, another carves perfect ice balls in the fraction of the time it takes a human with a knife and an ice pick. Robo-bartenders are shaking up South Korea’s cafe and bar culture as the country transitions from intensive to make social distancing to what the government calls “distancing in daily life.” And they look snazzy doing it too. In a tailored vest and bow tie, six-foot-tall Cabo narrates his actions as he carves ice for a whisky on…

The robot was jointly developed by SK Telecom and industrial automation specialist Omron Electronics in South Korea. It is intended to help enforce remaining public health measures to help prevent the transmission of Covid-19, such as temperature checks & enhanced hygiene. The upright white robot is equipped with cameras and an LED screen to show thermal images and transmits data in a real-time over SK Telecom’s 5G network. In a demonstration at the headquarters of SK Telecom, the robot greeted visitors, dispensed hand sanitiser and disinfected its surroundings using disinfectant…

One of the things that we love about the UC Berkeley’s Salto jumping robot is just how much better it gets, year after year. And these changes aren’t just incremental—the little robot’s capabilities seem to improve by leaps and bounds, as it were. The latest upgrade, presented at Virtual ICRA 2020 this week, it is particularly impressive, since Salto has learned how to very precisely stop jumping exactly where you want it to. As far as we know, the best way of getting Salto to stop jumping without destroying itself has been for someone with exceptional…

Stereotaxis , is a developer of  Robotic technologies for the treatment of cardiac arrhythmias, says it has reached a significant milestone of over 400 scientific publications now on documenting the clinical benefits of Stereotaxis robotic technology. David Fischel, chairman and CEO of  Stereotaxis, says: “The clinical benefits of Robotic Magnetic Navigation have been extensively validated in high-quality clinical literature and in the real-world treatment of over one-hundred-thousand arrhythmia patients”. “We are proud to the depth and breadth of clinical data demonstrating the benefits of robotics to patients and healthcare to…

A team of engineers have trained a Chef robot to prepare an omelette, all the way from cracking the eggs to plating the finished dish, and refined the ‘chef’s’ culinary skills to produce a reliable dish that actually tastes good. The researchers, from the “University of Cambridge”  in collaboration with the domestic appliance company Beko, used  “Machine learning” to train the robot to account for highly subjective matters of taste. The results are reported in the journal “IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters”, and will be available online as part of the…