Technology, features and articles | Educational Science

Jan 24, 2017

Tiny, Underwater Robots Offer Unprecedented View of World's Oceans

Robots the size of grapefruits are set to change the way scientists study the Earth's oceans, according to a new study. Though space is often known as the final frontier, the oceans of our home planet remain much of a mystery. Satellites have played a big role in that divide,...

Jan 25, 2017

New Exosuit Fabric Could Boost Mobility in People with Disabilities

Knitting and weaving artificial muscles could help create soft exoskeletons that people with disabilities could wear under their clothes to help them walk, according to new research. Textile processing is one of humanity's oldest technologies, but in recent years there has been renewed interest in using it to create smart...

Feb 1, 2017

'Bat Bot' Can Pull Off Impressive Aerial Acrobatics

Whether they're swooping around to catch dinner or delicately hanging upside down to sleep, bats are known for their acrobatic prowess. Now, scientists have created a robot inspired by these flying creatures. Dubbed the Bat Bot, it can fly, turn and swoop like its real-life counterpart in the animal kingdom....

Feb 2, 2017

RoboDragonfly: Tiny Backpack Turns Insect into a Cyborg

Scientists look to flying animals — birds, bats and insects — for inspiration when they design airborne drones. But researchers are also investigating how to use technology to interact with, and even guide, animals as they fly, enhancing the unique adaptations that allow them to take to the air. To...

Feb 3, 2017

Watch This Squishy, See-Through Robot Grab a Live Goldfish

Squishy, nearly transparent robots that flap, squeeze and kick when pumped with water could be the next underwater spies, at least when it comes to sneaking up on aquatic life. In a robotic test, one of these jelly-like machines was quick enough to grab and release a goldfish, a team...

Feb 9, 2017

Robo-Bees Could Aid Insects with Pollination Duties

Mini drones sporting horsehair coated in a sticky gel could one day take the pressure off beleaguered bee populations by transporting pollen from plant to plant, researchers said. Roughly three-quarters of the world’s flowering plants and about 35 percent of the world's food crops depend on animals to pollinate them,...

Feb 15, 2017

Cancer-Fighting Army? Magnetic Robot Swarms Could Combat Disease

Magnetically controlled swarms of microscopic robots might one day help fight cancer inside the body, new research suggests. Over the past decade, scientists have shown they can manipulate magnetic forces to guide medical devices within the human body, as these fields can apply forces to remotely control objects. For instance,...

Feb 24, 2017

A Killer Spin: Table Tennis Gets 'First' Robotic Coach

If you're interested in learning how to play table tennis, a robot in Japan is up for the coaching job, and the bot has even earned a Guinness World Record for its tutoring skills. The robot, called FORPHEUS, was named the first robot table tennis tutor for its ability to...

Feb 27, 2017

Robotic Arm Turns Your Digital Doodles into Good Old-Fashioned Sketches

A small robotic arm can bring your digital sketches to life, by re-creating your on-screen drawings with a pen and paper. The robotic drawing arm was designed by a team of researchers, who combined their knowledge of kinetic art, drawing machines and internet-connected microprocessor chips to develop the idea. The...

Mar 7, 2017

Robot 'Telepathy' Could Make Self-Driving Cars Safer

Are you nervous about entrusting your life to a self-driving car? What if you could telepathically communicate with the vehicle to instantaneously let it know if it makes a mistake? That is the ultimate promise of technology being developed by a team fromBoston University and the Computer Science and Artificial...

Mar 15, 2017

Robo First: Bot Assists with Tricky Cochlear-Implant Surgery

For the first time, robots have successfully performed a tricky, delicate operation that helped implant a hearing device into a deaf woman's ear, according to a new study. A 51-year-old woman who was completely deaf in both ears due to a rare autoimmune disease underwent an operation to receive a...

Mar 20, 2017

Watch Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Control a Giant Mech Robot

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos got to live out every 6-year-old's fantasy when he got behind the controls of a giant mech robot. The Verge reports that Bezos tried out the 13-foot-tall (4 meters) robot yesterday (March 19) at his company's private Machine Learning, Home Automation, Robotics and Space Exploration (MARS)...

Apr 5, 2017

'Mating' Robots Take a Fast-Forward Leap in Digital Darwinism

We might as well just give up control over the planet right now. In recently published research, scientists detail a set of experiments in which robots — real, physical machines — improved themselves through a kind of digital Darwinism. The bots, each drawing from a collective gene pool, competed with...

Apr 11, 2017

A Robot Magic Kingdom? Disney Wants Huggable Humanoids to Play Characters

The signature characters who wander around Disney theme parks taking photos with kids and signing autographs may be played by huggable humanoid robots in the future. Disney Enterprises filed a U.S. patent application for a soft body robot for physical interaction with humans that would act like an animated character,...

Apr 25, 2017

Why Can't You Shake Hands with a Robot?

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. It's quite common for humans – especially those who work in manufacturing – to tie a knot, strip the casing off a cable, insert a pin in a hole...