Robotics, features and articles | Educational Science

Oct 30, 2017

Lifelike 'Sophia' Robot Granted Citizenship to Saudi Arabia

A robot with an uncannily human-like appearance recently advanced one step closer to human status, when it was granted citizenship to Saudi Arabia at the tech summit Future Investment Initiative (FII). Named Sophia, the robot, created by Hanson Robotics (HR), has a pale-skinned face with features that are capable of...

Oct 30, 2017

Totally Adorable Bee-Bot Can Do It All

A new robotic bee can fly, dive, swim and leap out of the water, and it's totally adorable to boot. RoboBee is an aerial-to-aquatic robot that weighs just six-thousandths of an ounce (175 milligrams). These bots were first reported in 2014 in the journal Bioinspiration and Biomimetics, when — after...

Nov 1, 2017

Robot Cracks Those Curvy Captchas in Minutes

In just minutes, an artificially intelligent machine cracked those jumbled text sequences called captchas that are used to distinguish human web users from spam-spreading robots. So much for that. The AI startup, Vicarious, that built the captcha-cracking bot says its approach could point the way to more general, human-like artificial...

Nov 6, 2017

'Robutt' Simulates 10 Years of Butts on Car Seats

While crash-test dummies and other assembly-line machines seem to get the raw end of the deal, a different robot has a much cushier job: It tests car seats. Meet Robutt, which makes sure the seats of your new car stay nice and comfy by simulating about 10 years' worth of...

Nov 17, 2017

New Video Shows a Creepily Human-Like Robot Doing a Backflip

A new video shows a robot performing amazing acrobatic feats, from backflips to half-turn jumps. The eerily humanoid robot, called Atlas, is 4.9 feet (1.5 meters) tall and weighs 165 pounds (75 kilograms), and uses Lidar and stereovision to navigate in its surroundings, according to Boston Dynamics, which makes the...

Nov 20, 2017

Chemistry of 'Wine Legs' Inspires Surface-Skimming Minibots

Miniature robots hold great promise — tiny bots could help with tasks such as environmental cleanups in the future. But finding a way to power these tiny robotic helpers is a challenge because clean, lightweight and compact fuel sources are hard to develop. Now, a team of engineers from the...

Dec 18, 2017

Best Robot Kits for Kids

Help Children Learn to Build and Code (Image credit: Dmytro Zinkevych / Shutterstock)To get ahead in the 21st century, children not only need to be able to use technology but to develop it. That's why so many parents want their kids to learn how to code, and there's no better...

Jan 21, 2018

24 Underwater Drones – The Boom in Robotics Beneath the Waves

Robotics Beneath the Waves (Image credit: Festo)Aerial drones have buzzed their way into almost every aspect of the modern world, from photography and television news coverage, to environmental monitoring and archaeology. And many of the concepts developed for aerial drones are being adopted and adapted to work in a very...

Jan 30, 2018

Meet Erica, Japan's Next Robot News Anchor

At a mere 23 years old, Japan's latest news anchor would make her parents proud — if she had any. Erica, a lifelike android designed to look like a 23-year-old woman, may soon become a TV news anchor in Japan, the Wall Street Journal reported. According to Hiroshi Ishiguro, director...

Feb 13, 2018

This Electronic Skin May Help Prevent Robots from Crushing Us

A metallic robot hand with Terminator-like power sounds good for the movies. But what about a real-life future where that android is now cradling your baby or just shaking your hand? That's when attributes like gentle and sensitive might be more warranted to avoid a human-crushing outcome. Electronic skin may...

Feb 14, 2018

There's a Reason Roaches Love Banging Their Heads Into Walls

Small roaches with robust exoskeletons use their heads like an automobile bumper, scientists reported in a new study. When a scurrying roach's head hits a wall, its body rebounds upward at an angle, enabling the insect to scale the vertical surface more quickly than if it had applied the brakes....

Feb 16, 2018

How 5,000 Pencil-Size Robots May Solve the Mysteries of the Universe

A 45-year-old telescope is going to get a high-tech upgrade that will enable it to search for answers to the most perplexing questions in astronomy, including the existence of dark energy, a hypothetical invisible force that might be driving the expansion of the universe. The Nicholas U. Mayall Telescope in...

Feb 22, 2018

The Day Humans Taught Robots to Fight Back

An amazing video of a robot dog fighting off a human as it tries to open a door is not only creepy, but it also has raised the question: Why are we teaching a robot to fight back against humans? The dog in question is the SpotMini, a 66-lb. (30...

Mar 12, 2018

Humans Couldn't Keep Up with This Burger-Flipping Robot, So They Fired It

The burger-flipping robotic fry cook has been temporarily retired. Why? Because the robot's human colleagues couldn't keep up with it. Built by Miso Robotics, Flippy, described on the company's website as the world's first autonomous robotic kitchen assistant, was touted as a high-tech helper for fast-food restaurant kitchens in a...

Mar 16, 2018

Watch a Robot Solve a Rubik's Cube in 0.38 Seconds

A robot built at MIT has reportedly set a world speed record for solving a Rubik's Cube, cutting the previous record of 0.637 seconds (set by another robot in 2016) down to just 0.38 seconds. If robots had grandparents, this one's would be very proud. The Rubik's-solving robot was constructed...