Robots are doing many things for us already, including cooking our food, cleaning our places, and printing our homes. They can even do your manicure. Take Clockwork’s AI manicure robot for instance: it can get nail work done in 10 minutes. It uses dual 3D cameras and AI to finish the job with high accuracy. It works on all nail shapes.
Meet the StickBot: a robot made of sticks by Devin Carroll, a doctoral candidate in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. This robotic system is intended to provide users with a large amount of flexibility performing tasks, while keeping the costs low. It has tree branches that can be reconfigured to form a crawler or gripper robot. The below video shows Stickbot in action:
In the past few years, we have covered plenty of nature inspired robots here. University of Minnesota researchers have come with with an approach to enable soft robots to grow like plants to navigate hard to reach places like pipes. As they explain:
Plants use water to transport the building blocks that get transformed into solid roots as the plant grows outward. The researchers were able to mimic this process with synthetic material using a technique called photopolymerization, which uses light to transform liquid monomers into a solid material. Using this technology, the soft robot can more easily navigate obstacles and winding paths without having to drag any solid material behind it.
This approach can be used one day to build robots that grow like plants to navigate within the human body. More info is available here.
Meet the COVVI Hand: a smart prosthetic hand that helps amputees live a more independent life. It has a tough exterior made with silicone and high strength polymers. This prosthetic hand can be charged via USB-C. It has passively flexing fingers and thumb with a flex wrist with a range of +/- 30°.
Robots are getting smarter and more agile all the time. Cassie happens to have recently set a world record for a 100m run. It clocked at 24.73 seconds at the Whyte Track and Field Center, which happens to be the record for the fastest 100 meters by a bipedal robot. The robot started from standing position and returned to that after its sprint without any fall.
iRobot is out with a new smart robot that can clean your floors without you having to break a sweat. The Roomba Combo j7+ 2-in-1 Vacuum & Mop Robot is powered by iRobot OS 5.0. It has a fully retractable mop pad to clean your home without causing a wet mess. It can also avoid obstacles and pet waste.
Meet the XAG P100 Agricultural Drone: a fully autonomous drone that can spray pesticides, spread fertilizers, and scatter seeds. The P100 comes with one-tap smartphone control. It is powered by the SuperX 4 Pro Intelligent Control System with AI. This drone uses dynamic radar to avoid obstacles and adapt to most terrains.
Meet the Bunker Robot: a crawler type robot that can adapt to rough terrain. It can overcome climbs up to 36 degrees. It also has 80kg payload capacity. This robot can be customized for various tasks. The side rails are removable for access to sensors, cameras, and other modules.
This robot has tracks to conquer muddy surfaces. It is IP52 rated. It may look small but this quite a powerful robot as you can see in the above video.
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Here is a drone with a 3D printer inspired by wasps that can be used to build tall structures. These aerial vehicles deposit a cement like material to get the job done. The idea is to use a group of these to collectively to print buildings. The researchers use scanning drones that survey what has been so far to guide the printing drones to the right spot.
Keeping drones in the right spot was also a challenge. Researchers built a print head that adjusts its position to compensate for the movement of the drone. The above video shows how it works.
Spot from Boston Dynamics has gotten a lot of coverage in the media. It is capable of performing a wide variety of tasks for humans. This video shows how it can autonomously ride an elevator and open doors. Spot can perform visual inspections and perform as a first responder in emergency situations.The below video shows what Spot is truly capable of:
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