News by Subject Technology & Engineering

To walk or run with finesse, roaches and robots coordinate leg movements via signals sent through centralized systems. Though their moving parts are utterly divergent, researchers have devised handy principles and equations to assess how both beasts and bots locomote and to improve robotic gait.

A team of scientists from School of Engineering at Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU), Institute of Automation and Control Processes, and Institute of Marine Technology Problems of the Far Eastern Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences developed a software module to automatically diagnose defects in sensors and electric drives in various kinds of robots. The system is able to compensate for the detected defects in real time.

CSHL neuroscientist Anthony Zador shows how evolution and animal brains can be a rich source of inspiration for machine learning, especially to help AI tackle some enormously difficult problems, like doing the dishes.

The majority of soft robots today rely on external power and control, keeping them tethered to off-board systems or rigged with hard components. Now, researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and Caltech have developed soft robotic systems, inspired by origami, that can move and change shape in response to external stimuli, paving the way for fully untethered soft robots.

An experiment with a water-saving 'smart' faucet shows potential for reducing water use. The catch? Unbeknownst to study participants, the faucet's smarts came from its human controller.

Researchers at the UW have used machine learning to develop a new system that can monitor factory and warehouse workers and tell them how ergonomic their jobs are in real time.

UC Berkeley neuroscientists have created interactive maps that can predict where different categories of words activate the brain. Their latest map is focused on what happens in the brain when you read stories.