robotics
Mechanical Turk: An elaborate 18th-century hoax that played chess like an AI robot
An elaborate device called the Mechanical Turk defeated Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon Bonaparte at chess. Edgar Allan Poe revealed the hoax.
Artist Agnieszka Pilat’s strange journey from communist Poland to capitalist San Francisco
The so-called "court painter of Silicon Valley" was shaped by her youth in communist Poland but looks forward to a future ruled by celebrity robots.
Whose ethics should be programmed into the robots of tomorrow?
Will all robots think like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg?
Elon Musk’s Starlink in Ukraine helps destroy Russian tanks
Spotty connectivity isn’t going to jeopardize Ukraine’s drone attacks.
Drones and AI recover a meteorite for the first time
Aerial drone footage was sent to an AI trained to track down space rocks.
“Hey, Alexa! Are you trustworthy?”
The more social behaviors a voice-user interface exhibits, the more likely people are to trust it, engage with it, and consider it to be competent.
What AI cannot do
It is often assumed that AI will become so advanced that the technology will be able to do anything. In reality, there are limits.
MIT engineers test an idea for a new hovering rover
A levitating vehicle might someday explore the moon, asteroids, and other airless planetary surfaces.
Machines that see the world more like humans do
A new “common-sense” approach to computer vision enables artificial intelligence that interprets scenes more accurately than other systems do.
Batteries are the lump of coal in futurism’s Christmas stocking
A century ago, electric cars were common. The fact that they were almost entirely replaced due to the internal combustion engine is a testament to the glacial pace of battery breakthroughs.
Humanoid robots are waking up — and they look eerily real
Humanoid robots are coming, and Ameca is designed to be the ideal platform to study human-robot interactions.
This bird-like drone can perch on branches, catch objects
Drones have a lot to learn from the landing abilities of birds.
The subtle tricks artists can use to bridge the uncanny valley
The most technically impressive feats of animation often strike us as eerie instead of impressive, and it’s all thanks to the uncanny valley.
The Singularity: When will we all become super-humans?
Are we really only a moment away from "The Singularity," a technological epoch that will usher in a new era in human evolution?
One giant leap for the mini cheetah
A new control system, demonstrated using MIT’s robotic mini cheetah, enables four-legged robots to jump across uneven terrain in real-time.
Swarm robotics: Legged robots connect, form centipede-like robot in new system
Inspired by the group behaviors of simple animals, a team of roboticists has developed a new way for swarm robots to maneuver on land.
The U.S. Navy is building a solar plane
The 72-meter wingspan is lined with solar panels to give the plane the power it needs to stay airborne for nearly three months.
MIT’s robotic nose can detect first sign of disease
One day, this powerful tool could be in millions of smartphones.
Sophia the Robot will be mass-produced this year
The famous social robot is about to start rolling off the assembly line.
Squirrel parkour: How leaping squirrels could inspire more nimble robots
While a squirrel's life may look simple to human observers – climb, eat, sleep, repeat – it involves finely tuned cognitive skills.
What robots can learn from fish and fancy math
A new tuna robot leads the way to more agile underwater robots and drones.
Robots may be more like animals than humans
Meet MIT's Kate Darling, a robot ethicist who says that we should rethink our relationship with robots.
Autonomous killer robots may have already killed on the battlefield
A brief passage from a recent UN report describes what could be the first-known case of an autonomous weapon, powered by artificial intelligence, killing in the battlefield.
Body augmentation: People adjust quickly to robotic third thumb
Scientists successfully trained people to use robotic extra thumbs, suggesting body augmentation could revolutionize future humans.
Looking for something? A team at MIT develop a robot that sees through walls
It uses radio waves to pinpoint items, even when they're hidden from view.
Cornell creates the world’s tiniest self-folding origami bird
The bird demonstrates cutting-edge technology for devising self-folding nanoscale robots.
NASA’s Perseverance rover has a 1997 computer chip brain. Here’s why.
It may be old tech, but it's super-reliable.
Here’s what happened when AI and humans met in a strawberry-growing contest
Do they really need the human touch?
Scientists study moving worm “blobs” to create robot swarms
Robot developers adapt the behavior of worm "blobs".