Technology, features and articles | Educational Science

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...

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....