Artificial Intelligence News

May 10, 2024

Top Headlines

A Better Way to Control Shape-Shifting Soft Robots

May 9, 2024 — A new machine-learning technique can train and control a reconfigurable soft robot that can dynamically change its shape to complete a task. The researchers also built a simulator that can evaluate control algorithms for shape-shifting soft ...

Robotic System Feeds People With Severe Mobility Limitations

May 9, 2024 — Researchers have developed a robotic feeding system that uses computer vision, machine learning and multimodal sensing to safely feed people with severe mobility limitations, including those with spinal cord injuries, cerebral palsy and multiple ...

Generative AI That Imitates Human Motion

May 9, 2024 — Walking and running is notoriously difficult to recreate in robots. Now, a group of researchers has overcome some of these challenges by creating an innovative method that employs central pattern generators -- neural circuits located in the spinal ...

New Study Finds AI-Generated Empathy Has Its Limits

May 8, 2024 — Conversational agents (CAs) such as Alexa and Siri are designed to answer questions, offer suggestions -- and even display empathy. However, new research finds they do poorly compared to humans when interpreting and exploring a user's ...

Latest Headlines

updated 5:24pm EDT

Caterbot? Robatapillar? It Crawls With Ease Through Loops and Bends

May 6, 2024 — Engineers created a catapillar-shaped robot that splits into segments and reassembles, hauls cargo, and crawls through twisting ...

Robots Invited to Help Make Wind Turbine Blades

May 2, 2024 — Researchers have successfully leveraged robotic assistance in the manufacture of wind turbine blades, allowing for the elimination of difficult working conditions for humans and the potential to ...

Stretchable E-Skin Could Give Robots Human-Level Touch Sensitivity

May 3, 2024 — A stretchy electronic skin could equip robots and other devices with the same softness and touch sensitivity as human skin, opening up new possibilities to perform tasks that require a great deal of ...

Random Robots Are More Reliable

May 2, 2024 — New algorithm encourages robots to move more randomly to collect more diverse data for learning. In tests, robots started with no knowledge and then learned and correctly performed tasks within a ...

Machine Listening: Making Speech Recognition Systems More Inclusive

Apr. 30, 2024 — One group commonly misunderstood by voice technology are individuals who speak African American English, or AAE. Researchers designed an experiment to test how AAE speakers adapt their speech when ...

Trotting Robots Reveal Emergence of Animal Gait Transitions

Apr. 30, 2024 — A four-legged robot trained with machine learning has learned to avoid falls by spontaneously switching between walking, trotting, and pronking -- a milestone for roboticists as well as biologists ...

Built-in Bionic Computing

Apr. 26, 2024 — The use of pliable soft materials to collaborate with humans and work in disaster areashas drawn much recent attention. However, controlling soft dynamics for practical applications has remained a ...

Why Can't Robots Outrun Animals?

Apr. 24, 2024 — Robotics engineers have worked for decades and invested many millions of research dollars in attempts to create a robot that can walk or run as well as an animal. And yet, it remains the case that ...

How 3D Printers Can Give Robots a Soft Touch

Apr. 17, 2024 — Soft skin coverings and touch sensors have emerged as a promising feature for robots that are both safer and more intuitive for human interaction, but they are expensive and difficult to make. A ...

Star Trek's Holodeck Recreated Using ChatGPT and Video Game Assets

Apr. 11, 2024 — Star Trek's Holodeck is no longer just science fiction. Using AI, engineers have created a tool that can generate 3D environments, prompted by everyday ...

Computer Vision Researcher Develops Privacy Software for Surveillance Videos

Apr. 25, 2024 — Computer vision can be a valuable tool for anyone tasked with analyzing hours of footage because it can speed up the process of identifying individuals. For example, law enforcement may use it to ...

Computer Game in School Made Students Better at Detecting Fake News

Apr. 24, 2024 — A computer game helped upper secondary school students become better at distinguishing between reliable and misleading ...

New Computer Vision Tool Wins Prize for Social Impact

Apr. 11, 2024 — A team of computer scientists working on two different problems -- how to quickly detect damaged buildings in crisis zones and how to accurately estimate the size of bird flocks -- recently announced ...

A Faster, Better Way to Prevent an AI Chatbot from Giving Toxic Responses

Apr. 10, 2024 — A new technique can more effectively perform a safety check on an AI chatbot. Researchers enabled their model to prompt a chatbot to generate toxic responses, which are used to prevent the chatbot ...

Engineers Design Soft and Flexible 'Skeletons' for Muscle-Powered Robots

Apr. 8, 2024 — Engineers designed modular, spring-like devices to maximize the work of live muscle fibers so they can be harnessed to power biohybrid ...

New Privacy-Preserving Robotic Cameras Obscure Images Beyond Human Recognition

Apr. 4, 2024 — In a bid to restore privacy, researchers have created a new approach to designing cameras that process and scramble visual information before it is digitized so that it becomes obscured to the point ...

Revolutionary Biomimetic Olfactory Chips to Enable Advanced Gas Sensing and Odor Detection

Mar. 28, 2024 — A research team has addressed the long-standing challenge of creating artificial olfactory sensors with arrays of diverse high-performance gas sensors. Their newly developed biomimetic olfactory ...

Robot, Can You Say 'Cheese'?

Mar. 27, 2024 — What would you do if you walked up to a robot with a human-like head and it smiled at you first? You'd likely smile back and perhaps feel the two of you were genuinely interacting. But how does ...

New Software Enables Blind and Low-Vision Users to Create Interactive, Accessible Charts

Mar. 27, 2024 — Umwelt is a new a system that enables blind and low-vision users to author accessible, interactive charts representing data in three modalities: visualization, textual description, and ...

Engineering Household Robots to Have a Little Common Sense

Mar. 25, 2024 — Engineers aim to give robots a bit of common sense when faced with situations that push them off their trained path, so they can self-correct after missteps and carry on with their chores. The ...

AI Can Now Detect COVID-19 in Lung Ultrasound Images

Mar. 20, 2024 — Artificial intelligence can spot COVID-19 in lung ultrasound images much like facial recognition software can spot a face in a crowd, new research shows. The findings boost AI-driven medical ...

Robotic Metamaterial: An Endless Domino Effect

Mar. 20, 2024 — If it walks like a particle, and talks like a particle... it may still not be a particle. A topological soliton is a special type of wave or dislocation which behaves like a particle: it can move ...

Two Artificial Intelligences Talk to Each Other

Mar. 18, 2024 — Performing a new task based solely on verbal or written instructions, and then describing it to others so that they can reproduce it, is a cornerstone of human communication that still resists ...

Advanced Army Robots More Likely to Be Blamed for Deaths

Mar. 14, 2024 — Advanced killer robots are more likely to blamed for civilian deaths than military machines, new research has revealed. The study shows that high-tech bots will be held more responsible for ...

Robot ANYmal Can Do Parkour and Walk Across Rubble

Mar. 13, 2024 — The quadrupedal robot ANYmal went back to school and has learned a lot. Researchers used machine learning to teach it new skills: the robot can now climb over obstacles and successfully negotiate ...

How Do Neural Networks Learn? A Mathematical Formula Explains How They Detect Relevant Patterns

Mar. 11, 2024 — Neural networks have been powering breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, including the large language models that are now being used in a wide range of applications, from finance, to human ...

Robotic Interface Masters a Soft Touch

Mar. 11, 2024 — Researchers have developed a haptic device capable of reproducing the softness of various materials, from a marshmallow to a beating heart, overcoming a deceptively complex challenge that has ...

Going Top Shelf With AI to Better Track Hockey Data

Mar. 11, 2024 — Researchers got a valuable assist from artificial intelligence (AI) tools to help capture and analyze data from professional hockey games faster and more accurately than ever before, with big ...

The Role of Machine Learning and Computer Vision in Imageomics

Mar. 7, 2024 — A new field promises to usher in a new era of using machine learning and computer vision to tackle small and large-scale questions about the biology of organisms around the ...

Method Rapidly Verifies That a Robot Will Avoid Collisions

Mar. 7, 2024 — A new safety-check technique can prove with 100 percent accuracy that a planned robot motion will not result in a collision. The method can generate a proof in seconds and does so in a way that can ...