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Categories: Engineering: Robotics Research, Offbeat: Plants and Animals

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Researchers have developed an L3 F-TOUCH sensor to enhance tactile capabilities in robots, allowing it to 'feel' objects and adjust its grip accordingly.

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A hot bath is a place to relax. For scientists, it is also where molecules or tiny building blocks meet to form materials. Researchers take it to the next level and use the energy of swimming bacteria to forge materials. A recent study shows us how this works and the potential sustainability benefits that may arise from this innovative approach.

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Bees and wasps have converged on the same architectural solutions to nest-building problems, according to new research.

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A new machine-learning technique can efficiently learn to control a robot, leading to better performance with fewer data.

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What happens inside the carnivorous plant Venus Flytrap when it catches an insect? New technology has led to discoveries about the electrical signalling that causes the trap to snap shut. Bioelectronic technology enables advanced research into how plants react to their surroundings, and to stress.

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A new study in mice suggests replacing traditional protein sources with mealworms in high-fat diets could slow weight gain, improve immune response, reduce inflammation, enhance energy metabolism, and beneficially alter the ratio of good to bad cholesterol.

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Inspired by the effortless way humans handle objects without seeing them, engineers have developed a new approach that enables a robotic hand to rotate objects solely through touch, without relying on vision.

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Egg 'signatures' will allow drongos to identify cuckoo 'forgeries' almost every time, study finds. African cuckoos may have met their match with the fork-tailed drongo, which scientists predict can detect and reject cuckoo eggs from their nest on almost every occasion, despite them on average looking almost identical to drongo eggs.

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Caecilians are an illusive type of snakelike amphibian that live in aquatic and subterranean environments. In some species, mothers produce a special type of nutrient-rich skin that juveniles consume, similar to the way in which humans breastfeed their children. A new study shows this behavior passes on microbes to juvenile caecilians, inoculating them to jump-start a healthy microbiome.

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As artificial intelligence expands across more professions, robot preachers and AI programs offer new means of sharing religious beliefs, but they may undermine credibility and reduce donations for religious groups that rely on them.

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Like us, cells communicate. Well, in their own special way. Using waves as their common language, cells tell one another where and when to move. They talk, they share information, and they work together -- much like interdisciplinary teams. Researchers conducted research on how cells communicate -- and how that matters to future projects, e.g. application to wound healing.

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Sabertooth cats make up a diverse group of long-toothed predators that roamed Africa around 6-7 million years ago, around the time that hominins -- the group that includes modern humans -- began to evolve. By examining one of the largest global Pliocene collections of fossils in Langebaanweg, north of Cape Town in South Africa, researchers present two new sabertooth species and the first family tree of the region's ancient sabertooths. Their results suggest that the distribution of sabertooths throughout ancient Africa might have been different than previously assumed, and the study provides important information about Africa's paleoenvironment.

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Scientists have developed a suite of robotic systems and planners enabling robots to explore more quickly, probe the darkest corners of unknown environments, and create more accurate and detailed maps. The systems allow robots to do all this autonomously, finding their way and creating a map without human intervention.

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A new technique enables a human to efficiently fine-tune a robot that failed to complete a desired task with very little effort on the part of the human. Their system uses algorithms, counterfactual explanations, and feedback from the user to generate synthetic data it uses to quickly fine-tune the robot.

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Parasitic hairworms manipulate the behavior of their hosts in what's sometimes called 'mind control.' A new study reveals another strange trait shared by different hairworm species: they're missing about 30% of the genes that researchers expected them to have. What's more, the missing genes are responsible for the development of cilia, the hair-like structures present in at least some of the cells of every other animal known.

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This robot can swim under the sand and dig itself out too, thanks to two front limbs that mimic the oversized flippers of turtle hatchlings. It's the only robot that is able to travel in sand at a depth of 5 inches. It can also travel at a speed of 1.2 millimeters per second--roughly 4 meters, or 13 feet, per hour. This may seem slow but is comparable to other subterranean animals like worms and clams.

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Researchers have developed an automatic process for making soft sensors. These universal measurement cells can be attached to almost any kind of object. Applications are envisioned especially in robotics and prosthetics.

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Soft robotic grippers could greatly increase productivity in many fields. However, currently existing designs are overly complex and expensive. A research team has developed ROSE, a novel embracing soft gripper inspired by the blooming and closing of rose flowers. Bearing a surprisingly simple, inexpensive, and scalable design, ROSE can pick up many kinds of objects without damaging them, even in challenging environments and conditions.

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For the first time, a person with an arm amputation can manipulate each finger of a bionic hand as if it was his own. Thanks to revolutionary surgical and engineering advancements that seamlessly merge humans with machines, this breakthrough offers new hope and possibilities for people with amputations worldwide. A study presents the first documented case of an individual whose body was surgically modified to incorporate implanted sensors and a skeletal implant. A.I. algorithms then translated the user's intentions into movement of the prosthesis.

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Engineers are training legged robots for future lunar missions that will search for minerals and raw materials. To ensure that the robots can continue to work even if one of them malfunctions, the researchers are teaching them teamwork.