Technology, features and articles | Educational Science

Aug 9, 2017

How Do You Make a Likable Robot? Program It to Make Mistakes

You might think a robot would be more likely to win people over if it were good at its job. But according to a recent study, people find imperfect robots more likable. In previous studies, researchers noticed that human subjects reacted differently to robots that made unplanned errors in their...

Sep 5, 2017

This Lumpy Robot Lends Endearing Touch to Social Bots

Blossom isn't made of sleek and shiny metal, and has no jointed appendages and no blinking lights. Quite the opposite, in fact — it closely resembles a huggable, handcrafted child's toy and looks like it could have been painstakingly stitched together a century ago. Yes, stitched. The unusual-looking Blossom, the...

Sep 12, 2017

Stretchy Artificial 'Skin' Could Give Robots a Sense of Touch

Rubber electronics and sensors that operate normally even when stretched to up to 50 percent of their length could work as artificial skin on robots, according to a new study. They could also give flexible sensing capabilities to a range of electronic devices, the researchers said. Like human skin, the...

Sep 13, 2017

Assemble! 'Voltron'-Like Robots Can Elect Their Own Leader

With a nod to the Voltron Defender of the Universe — the animated show in which five lion-shaped robots link up to form a giant machine that fights evil — a team of scientists has created robots that work together and decide which one will lead them. Typically, if a...

Sep 20, 2017

Super-Sticky Robot Clings Underwater Like 'Hitchhiker' Fish

A robot inspired by a hitchhiking fish can cling to surfaces underwater with a force 340 times its own weight. The new bot was inspired by the remora, fish that cling to larger marine animals like sharks and whales, feeding off their hosts' dead skin and feces. Remora fish do...

Sep 27, 2017

Origami-Style Suits Turn Robots into Real-Life 'Transformers'

Just as one might don a wet suit to work underwater or a spacesuit to work in space, researchers are designing exoskeletons for robots so the machines can wear a variety of outfits tailored to different missions. In experiments, self-folding, heat-activated origami suits created for robots could help the machines...

Sep 29, 2017

Robotic Farm Completes 1st Fully Autonomous Harvest

It's harvest season in many parts of the world, but on one farm in the United Kingdom, robots — not humans — are doing all the heavy lifting. At Hands Free Hectare, an experimental farm run by researchers from Harper Adams University, in the village of Edgmond in the U.K.,...

Oct 10, 2017

Humanity's Sci-Fi Future: Are We Really Ready for Intelligent Robots?

NEW YORK — From transporters and lightsabers to spaceships that can travel faster than the speed of light, futuristic devices that lie beyond humanity's grasp — for now, at least — are a staple of science fiction. And yet over time, people have steadily advanced the boundaries of what technology...

Oct 17, 2017

Why You Shouldn't Expect to See 'Blade Runner' Replicants Anytime Soon

Fans of the 1982 sci-fi-noir thriller Blade Runner had to wait more than a quarter-century for the follow-up film Blade Runner 2049, which opened in U.S. theaters on Oct. 6. But they'll likely have to wait much, much longer to see any semblance of the films' human-mimicking androids — dubbed...

Oct 26, 2017

How Do You Make a Conscious Robot?

You've likely heard of conscious thought and subconscious thought, but humans may in fact possess three levels of consciousness, a new review suggests — and this concept could help scientists develop truly conscious artificial intelligence (AI) someday. Though AI technology has been advancing at a rapid clip, in many ways,...

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...