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Cornell scientists develop new material to give robots more sensitive touch

A new synthetic material created by a scientist at Cornell University is said to give robots a “softer touch”.

Developed by PhD student Patricia Xu, at Cornell’s Organic Robotics Lab, the “sensory network” – also dubbed “optical lace” – is said to be similar to the human biological nervous system.

The lab’s paper, Optical Lace for Synthetic Afferent Neural Networks, was published in Science Robotics. [Read more…] about Cornell scientists develop new material to give robots more sensitive touch

Laser interferometer verifies Trumpf Trumatic faster and more accurately

When Trumpf saw API’s XD Laser at a trade show, they immediately recognized that it could measure the three degrees of freedom needed for production of their TruMatic 7000 punch laser machine in only a single measurement process.

A subsequent demo at Trumpf’s factory in Ditzingen, Germany, however, revealed more benefits than Trumpf was anticipating. [Read more…] about Laser interferometer verifies Trumpf Trumatic faster and more accurately

Scurrying cockroaches help researchers steady staggering robots

Ew, a cockroach! But it zips off before the swatter appears. Now, researchers have leveraged the bug’s superb scurrying skills to create a cleverly simple method to assess and improve locomotion in robots.

Normally, tedious modeling of mechanics, electronics, and information science is required to understand how insects’ or robots’ moving parts coordinate smoothly to take them places.

But in a new study, biomechanics researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology boiled down the sprints of cockroaches to handy principles and equations they then used to make a test robot amble about better. [Read more…] about Scurrying cockroaches help researchers steady staggering robots