Automation

Elevating Welding Operations with Collaborative Automation

Mesekon Oy, a Finnish welding manufacturer that produces complex welded steel structures for the marine, energy, and paper industries, needed a flexible and collaborative solution to improve efficiency, reduce defects, and enhance workplace ergonomics by automating repetitive and physically demanding welding operations. Read on to learn what Mesekon Oy did.

Boosting Robotic Grasping Performance with Six Degrees of Freedom Dataset

A new study, published in the journal Results in Engineering, introduced a meticulously designed dataset aimed at enhancing the performance of 6D pose estimation algorithms. Read on to learn more.

A Springtail-Like Jumping Robot

Springtails, small bugs often found crawling through leaf litter and garden soil, are expert jumpers. Inspired by these hopping hexapods, roboticists in the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and...

Morphing Robot Turns Challenging Terrain to Its Advantage

From mountain goats that run up near-vertical rock faces to armadillos that roll into a protective ball, animals have evolved to adapt effortlessly to changes in their environment....

Robot Works Inside E-Waste Recycling Facility

A researcher from Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science is using robotics to improve e-waste recycling.

MIT Engineers Help Multirobot Systems Stay In the Safety Zone

Drone shows are an increasingly popular form of large-scale light display. These shows incorporate hundreds to thousands of airborne bots, each programmed to fly in paths that...

5Ws of a 3D-Printed Electrospray Engine

With the goal to democratize space research, MIT engineers have demonstrated the first fully 3D-printed, droplet-emitting electrospray engine which can be produced rapidly and for a fraction of the cost of traditional thruster.

NASA Demonstrates Software ‘Brains’ Shared Across Satellite Swarms

New NASA technology works within satellite swarms. This technology, called Distributed Spacecraft Autonomy (DSA), allows individual spacecraft to make independent...

Can Self-Driving Cars Navigate Roundabouts?

Roundabouts are an increasingly common feature of U.S. roads, in part because they reduce both traffic delays and accidents. However, they rely on the judgment of drivers to ensure traffic flows...

5Ws of a Micro-Aerial Robot

MIT researchers are developing robotic insects that could someday swarm out of mechanical hives to rapidly perform precise pollination.

A New Approach to Autonomous Vehicle Safety

A team has programmed a robotic spacecraft simulator with what it calls s-FEAST: Safe Fault Estimation via Active Sensing Tree Search. Read on to learn more.

Designing Robotic Insects for Mechanical Pollination

MIT researchers are developing robotic insects that could someday swarm out of mechanical hives to rapidly perform precise pollination.

Quoth the RAVEN: I Can Fly Like a Bird

RAVEN (Robotic Avian-inspired Vehicle for multiple ENvironments) is designed based on perching birds that frequently switch between air and land. Its multifunctional robotic legs allow it to take off autonomously in environments previously inaccessible to winged drones.

Gyro Sensors for Monitoring Motion on Martian Moon Rover

On the JAXA Martian Moons mission, gyro sensors from Silicon Sensing on the rover vehicle will explore the larger moon, Phobos, collecting vital surface samples.

Innovative Robot Navigation Inspired by Brain Function Boosts Efficiency and Accuracy

Led by postdoctoral research fellow Somayeh Hussaini, alongside Professor Michael Milford and Dr Tobias Fischer of the Queensland University of Technology...

Smallest Walking Robot Makes Microscale Measurements

Cornell researchers in physics and engineering have created the smallest walking robot yet. Its mission: to be tiny enough to interact with waves of visible light and still move...

A New Home for Sustainability Robotics

The world is currently facing significant environmental challenges and complex demands related to infrastructure and natural ecosystems. To address these issues, viable solutions that are both...

Giving Robots the Human Touch via Listening

New research from Duke University details a system dubbed SonicSense that allows robots to interact with their surroundings in ways previously limited to humans.

How Much Do You Know About Industrial Robotics?

Industrial robots are playing a continually increasing role in manufacturing worldwide. It’s therefore important that we in the tech industries have a good understanding of what they are, what they do, and what they can do. How much do you know about industrial robotics? Test your knowledge with this quiz.

5Ws of a Raven-Inspired Drone

EPFL researchers have built RAVEN, a drone that can walk, hop, and jump into flight with the aid of birdlike legs.

Artificial Intelligence and Industrial Robotics: Far Beyond the Hype

Accelerating progress in AI is redefining what is possible with industrial robotics, enhancing everything from robots’ ability to grip, pick and place as well as their ability to map and navigate through dynamic environments. Read on to learn more about what this means.

Top 10 Most-Read Tech Briefs Stories of 2024

With another year of Tech Briefs almost in the books, it's time to look at our most-read articles of 2024.

Meet MobiPrint: A Mobile 3D Printer that Can Automatically Measure a Room and Print to the Specs

University of Washington researchers have created MobiPrint, a mobile 3D printer that can automatically measure a room and print objects onto its floor. The team’s graphic interface lets users design objects for a space that the robot has mapped out.

Helping Robots Make Good Decisions in Real Time

In 2018, Google DeepMind's AlphaZero program taught itself the games of chess, shogi, and go, using machine learning and a special algorithm to determine the best moves to win a game within a...