Robotics, features and articles | Educational Science

Apr 3, 2018

NASA Has a Plan to Put Robot Bees on Mars

NASA has two teams of researchers working to design a robotic bee that can fly on Mars. The space agency announced the project on March 30. It's in its early stages, but the idea is to replace modern rovers — which are slow, bulky and very expensive — with swarms...

Apr 17, 2018

Elon Musk Says 'Humans Are Underrated'

Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk just paid a rare compliment to his own species, calling humans underrated on Twitter last week. What brought about this somewhat underwhelming accolade? Musk had directed Tesla to adopt advanced automation as the assembly line for Tesla's new sedan, the Model 3 electric car....

May 7, 2018

Elon Musk Ditched His 'Flufferbot.' No, It's Not What You Think.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk blamed an unusual culprit for delays and missed deadlines in the production of Tesla's Model 3 Sedan, the company's first electric car produced for the mass market — an automated machine in the car's assembly line that Musk recently identified as a flufferbot. The robot had...

May 8, 2018

Former NASA Engineers Building Real-Life Underwater Transformer

A transformer designed to do grunt work for the oil industry and military is coming, and it's… admittedly kind of fun to look at. Houston Mechatronics, a small company founded and led by a team of former NASA robot engineers, announced May 1 some major strides toward building a transforming...

May 11, 2018

Watch Out: This Robot Could Run After You

You can run from Boston Dynamics' humanoid robot Atlas, but it wouldn't do you any good — the robot can run after you. In a video shared to YouTube yesterday (May 10) by the robot maker, the uncannily human-like Atlas demonstrates running ability that is eerily reminiscent of a person's....

May 17, 2018

Wireless 'RoboFly' Looks Like an Insect, Gets Its Power from Lasers

A new type of flying robot is so tiny and lightweight — it weighs about as much as a toothpick — it can perch on your finger. The little flitter is also capable of untethered flight and is powered by lasers. This is a big leap forward in the design...

Jul 10, 2018

No Vision, No Problem for This 'Blind' Cheetah Robot

Engineers and roboticists at MIT are clearly doing everything in their power to ease our transition into a full-on robot takeover. Their latest achievement in blind locomotion — robots that can navigate without the benefit of vision sensors — is the 90-lb. (41 kilograms) Cheetah 3. This four-limbed mechanical beast...

Jul 11, 2018

Here's What Sophia, the First Robot Citizen, Thinks About Gender and Consciousness

In a video that's as unsettling as it is awe-inspiring, Sophia — the world's first robot citizen — breaks down everything from gender to ethical robot design. Sophia spoke last month at a festival of the future called Brain Bar in Budapest, Hungary. Since Sophia was activated in April 2015,...

Jul 19, 2018

This Robot Just Wants To Hug A Jellyfish Without Committing Jellymurder

Humans like to study ocean creatures. Humans, badly adapted to spending time underwater, need tools to do that. Unfortunately, most human tools are hard, while many ocean creatures are soft and delicate. A team from Harvard University's Wyss institute (which studies bio-inspired engineering) hopes to solve that problem with a...

Jul 21, 2018

Bug-Sized Robot Competitors to Swarm DARPA's 'Robot Olympics'

Picture the Olympic Games — except instead of human athletes, the competitors are all insect-sized robots. That's the scenario proposed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), representatives said in a statement. The group is seeking innovative designs for robots that measure just a fraction of an inch, and...

Sep 20, 2018

This Machine Will Hug Your 'Soft Bodies' and Force Them to Be Twitchy Robots

Have you ever looked at a length of foam or a teddy bear and wished that it could writhe its way across the floor like an ungainly worm? Well, problem solved: A research team at Yale has developed a robotic system that can wrap around soft objects (including people) and...

Oct 5, 2018

No, Particle Accelerators Will Not Destroy the Planet, But Humans Might

The future could be glorious or grim, and the gust of wind that tips things one way or another is us — the humans of the 21st century. The stakes are very high this century, said British cosmologist Martin Rees. It's the first century when human beings … can determine...

Oct 12, 2018

Humanoid Robot Atlas Can Now Do Parkour and That's Not at All Terrifying

Remember Atlas, the robot that can run like a person? It can now do a lot more than that. Yesterday, (Oct. 11) robotics company Boston Dynamics posted a new video on YouTube showcasing the robot's latest progress, carrying it past its prior agility goals in leaps and bounds — literally....

Dec 17, 2018

Scientists Proposed a Nuclear 'Tunnelbot' to Hunt Life in Europa's Hidden Ocean

A group of scientists wants to send a nuclear-powered tunnelbot to Europa to blaze a path through the Jovian moon's thick shell of ice and search for life. Europa, the fourth largest of Jupiter's 53 moons, is one of the best candidates in our solar system for hosting alien life....

May 9, 2019

NASA Is Developing 'Soft Robots' That Look Like Inflatable 'Aliens'

Two interns at NASA are part of a larger group working on soft robots that could be used for exploring worlds beyond Earth. This includes the moon, NASA's next major destination for astronauts. The advantage of a soft robot is that it's flexible and, in some ways, better able to...