news 2023

Scientists show that breathing may be used to control a wearable extra robotic arm in healthy individuals, without hindering control of other parts of the body. Neuroengineer Silvestro Micera develops advanced technological solutions to help people regain sensory and motor functions that have been lost due to traumatic events or neurological disorders.

In a step toward more autonomous soft robots and wearable technologies, researchers have created a device that uses color to simultaneously sense multiple mechanical and temperature stimuli. Robotics researchers have already made great strides in developing sensors that can perceive changes in position, pressure, and temperature - all of which are important for technologies like wearable devices and human-robot interfaces.

For the first time, researchers have succeeded in printing a robotic hand with bones, ligaments and tendons made of different polymers using a new laser scanning technique. 3D printing is advancing rapidly, and the range of materials that can be used has expanded considerably. While the technology was previously limited to fast-curing plastics, it has now been made suitable for slow-curing plastics as well.

A new ETH study compares 27 humanoid robots with humans and comes to the conclusion that while robots have better components, they are still not capable of achieving as much.

Researchers have designed a bio-inspired robot with a novel trimmed helicoid structure that allows for a wide range of motion and safe interaction with humans. At EPFL's CREATE lab , under the guidance of Josie Hughes, a breakthrough has been made in the realm of soft robotics. Drawing inspiration from the versatile movement of elephant trunks and octopus tentacles, the team introduced the trimmed helicoid - a novel robotic structure that promises greater compliance and control in robotic designs.

For his Master's project at EPFL, Mickaël Achkar compiled data on the movements of dogs to develop a robotic version of the animal that, once set in motion, can run without assistance. Engineers at EPFL's Computational Robot Design & Fabrication Lab (CREATE), headed by Prof. Josie Hughes, are coming up with new ways of building robots possessing never-before-seen capabilities.

Swiss engineers are training legged robots for future lunar missions that will search for minerals and raw materials. To ensure that the robots can continue to work even if one of them malfunctions, the researchers are teaching them teamwork. On the Moon, there are raw materials that humanity could one day mine and use.

Researchers at EPFL have developed the first system that enables four-arm laparoscopic surgery by controlling two additional robotic arms via haptic foot interfaces. Roboticists at EPFL have combined multi-limb manipulation with advanced shared control augmentation for an unprecedented advance in the field of laparoscopic surgery.

Researchers from Empa and Imperial College London are developing a heat-resistant drone that can analyze the source of danger at close range in the event of a building or forest fire. This allows firefighters to optimize the strategy of a high-risk operation before entering the danger zone. Where others rush out, they have to go in: Firefighters put themselves in dangerous situations during rescue operations - sometimes right in the midst of a sea of flames.

Jamie Paik and her team of researchers at EPFL's School of Engineering have created an origami-like robot that can change shape, move around and interact with objects and people. By combining inspiration from the digital world of polygon meshing and the biological world of swarm behavior, the Mori3 robot can morph from 2D triangles into almost any 3D object.

Researchers have used Chat-GPT-3 to develop a robotic gripper for harvesting tomatoes, in a first demonstration of the artificial intelligence tool's potential for collaborating with humans on robot design. With their ability to process vast amounts of text data, and to use this information to answer prompts, neural networks known as large language models (LLMs) like Chat-GPT have been making headlines for their potential to change the way we write, learn, and even make art.

They maintain and repair buildings, observe natural phenomena and transport goods: Drones and robots could play a major role in our lives in the future. With the DroneHub, a kind of aviary is to be created in the NEST research and innovation building on the Empa campus in Dübendorf, where researchers will explore and further develop the interaction of drones, infrastructure and natural habitats together with industrial and academic partners.

Their task is to monitor the condition of ecosystems, for instance in the forest floor - and crumble to dust when their work is done: bio-gliders modeled on the Java cucumber, which sails its seeds dozens of meters through the air. researchers have developed these sustainable flying sensors from potato starch and wood waste.

Researchers have developed a temperature-modulating robotic system that can be seamlessly integrated into notoriously sensitive honeybee hives, providing both a never-before-seen view of honeybee behavior and a means to influence it. Honeybees are famously finicky when it comes to being studied. Research instruments and conditions and even unfamiliar smells can disrupt a colony's behavior.

Scientists from the Adolphe Merkle Institute and Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, USA) have developed a flexible robot, inspired by earthworms, that can squeeze into small spaces and move in all directions regardless of the surface . Soft robots with worm-like mechanical properties and shape can, in principle, move over rough terrain and into tight spaces inaccessible to other robots.

Researchers from EPFL and JTEKT Corporation have developed an automated driving system based on the concept of 'collaborative steering', which aims to increase transportation safety, efficiency, and comfort by encouraging active interaction between autonomous vehicles and their human drivers. Autonomous driving technologies have already been integrated into many mass-produced vehicles, providing human drivers with steering assistance in tasks like centering a vehicle in its lane.

Until now, microscopic robotic systems have had to make do without arms. Now researchers at ETH Zurich have developed an ultrasonically actuated glass needle that can be attached to a robotic arm. This lets them pump and mix minuscule amounts of liquid and trap particles. We are all familiar with robots equipped with moving arms.

Combining biology and robotics, scientists at EPFL have built a robotic microsurgery platform that can perform high-precision, micrometer-resolution dissections to advance our understanding of how the vertebrate body forms during embryonic development. Understanding the biology behind an embryo's development is crucial not only from a basic science perspective, but also from a medical one.