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Categories: Computer Science: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Offbeat: Plants and Animals

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New research aims to increase autonomy for individuals with such motor impairments by introducing a head-worn device that will help them control a mobile manipulator. Teleoperated mobile manipulators can aid individuals in completing daily activities, but many existing technologies like hand-operated joysticks or web interfaces require a user to have substantial fine motor skills to effectively control them. Research led by robotics Ph.D. student Akhil Padmanabha offers a new device equipped with a hands-free microphone and head-worn sensor that allows users to control a mobile robot via head motion and speech recognition.

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Researchers have developed biosensor technology that will allow you to operate devices, such as robots and machines, solely through thought control.

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Synecoculture, a new farming method, involves growing mixed plant species together in high density. However, it requires complex operation since varying species with different growing seasons and growing speeds are planted on the same land. To address this need, researchers have developed a robot that can sow, prune, and harvest plants in dense vegetation growth. Its small, flexible body will help large-scale Synecoculture. This is an important step towards achieving sustainable farming and carbon neutrality.

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Researchers report abnormalities in functional neural networks of dogs diagnosed with anxiety. The study shows that compared with healthy dogs, those with anxiety exhibit stronger connections between the amygdala and other regions of the anxiety network. The findings might also help reveal how functional connections between anxiety-related regions of the brain are altered in cases of human anxiety disorders.

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Researchers have developed resilient artificial muscles that can enable insect-scale aerial robots to effectively recover flight performance after suffering severe damage.

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A new study has found evidence of cheesemaking, using milk from multiple animals in Late Neolithic Poland.

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The Walking Oligomeric Robotic Mobility System, or WORMS, is a reconfigurable, modular, multiagent robotics architecture for extreme lunar terrain mobility. The system could be used to assemble autonomous worm-like parts into larger biomimetic robots that could explore lava tubes, steep slopes, and the moon's permanently shadowed regions.

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Robots can be useful as mental wellbeing coaches in the workplace -- but perception of their effectiveness depends in large part on what the robot looks like.

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A researcher has solved a nearly 60-year-old game theory dilemma called the wall pursuit game, with implications for better reasoning about autonomous systems such as driver-less vehicles.

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Thanks to technological advances in microbial DNA analysis, researchers have discovered that mountaineers' boots aren't the only things leaving footprints on the world's tallest mountain. When someone sneezes on Everest, their germs can last for centuries.

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Most animals can quickly transition from walking to jumping to crawling to swimming if needed without reconfiguring or making major adjustments. Most robots cannot. But researchers have now created soft robots that can seamlessly shift from walking to swimming, for example, or crawling to rolling using a bistable actuator made of 3D-printed soft rubber containing shape-memory alloy springs that react to electrical currents by contracting, which causes the actuator to bend. The team used this bistable motion to change the actuator or robot's shape. Once the robot changes shape, it is stable until another electrical charge morphs it back to its previous configuration.

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Great apes deliberately spin themselves in order make themselves dizzy -- findings which could provide clues about the role of altered mental states for origins of the human mind.

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Researchers have observed a highly unusual behavior in the endangered freshwater mussel, Unio crassus. The jets disturb the river surface and attract fish. Mussel larvae in the jets can then attach to the gills of the fish and complete their metamorphosis into adults.

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Island-dwelling mammal species often expand or contract in size, becoming giant or dwarf versions of their mainland counterparts. A new Science study from a global team shows that those giants and dwarfs have faced extreme risk of extinction -- an existential threat exacerbated by the arrival of humans.

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Fast gamers are more intelligent: Intelligence can be predicted through virtual reality games.

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In the first step toward understanding how dogs -- and perhaps humans -- might adapt to intense environmental pressures such as exposure to radiation, heavy metals, or toxic chemicals, researchers found that two groups of dogs living within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone showed significant genetic differences between them. The results indicate that these are two distinct populations that rarely interbreed. While earlier studies focused on the effects of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant disaster on various species of wildlife, this is the first investigation into the genetic structure of stray dogs living near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

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Imagine for a moment, that we are on a safari watching a giraffe graze. After looking away for a second, we then see the animal lower its head and sit down. But, we wonder, what happened in the meantime? Computer scientists have found a way to encode an animal's pose and appearance in order to show the intermediate motions that are statistically likely to have taken place.

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A new study has shown that bumblebees pick up new 'trends' in their behavior by watching and learning from other bees, and that one form of a behavior can spread rapidly through a colony even when a different version gets discovered.

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Researchers have mapped the sparse life hidden away in salt domes, rocks and crystals at Salar de Pajonales at the boundary of the Chilean Atacama Desert and Altiplano. Then they trained a machine learning model to recognize the patterns and rules associated with their distributions so it could learn to predict and find those same distributions in data on which it was not trained. In this case, by combining statistical ecology with AI/ML, the scientists could locate and detect biosignatures up to 87.5 percent of the time and decrease the area needed for search by up to 97 percent.

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Scientists have developed biodegradable algae-based hydrogels for strain sensing devices -- such as those used in health monitors worn by runners and hospital patients to track heart rate -- using natural elements like rock salt, water and seaweed, combined with graphene. As well as being more environmentally friendly than polymer-based hydrogels, commonly used in health sensor technology, the graphene algae sensors perform strongly in terms of sensitivity.