Robots tagged posts

Robots learn new skills from a single video—in just 29 seconds

Framework could teach robots new skills from a single video
Robots acquire manipulation skills in seconds from a single human video. (A) Current methods teach a robot new skills through a cumbersome training-time loop that is costly and slow, and erodes previously mastered skills. HOST instead acquires skills at inference time, each from a single human video, averaging 29 seconds, while retaining its previously mastered skills. (B) Skill acquisition from a single human video confronts a structural mismatch between video demonstration and execution. Temporal asynchrony between the two decouples the prediction target from the video demonstration, while state discrepancies hinder the translation of the observed behavior into action...
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3D-printable material can heal the body, build better robots and recover critical minerals

3D-printable material can heal the body, build better robots and recover critical minerals
Credit: University of Texas at Austin

A new type of 3D-printable material developed by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin mimics human tissue’s ability to sort and filter, allowing certain molecules to pass through while keeping others out. This broad functionality means the material can be used in a variety of applications across medicine, water and robotics.

Current methods for building small tissue-like materials don’t scale to sizes that can make applications possible, the researchers say. The team overcame these issues of speed and scalability by jamming billions of tiny water droplets tightly together using simple mixing and centrifuge techniques to form large, tissue-like materials in just a few minutes...

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Bio-inspired chip helps robots and self-driving cars react faster to movement

Bio-inspired chip helps robots and self-driving cars react faster to movement
Neuromorphic motion extraction hardware and its application. Credit: Nature Communications (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-68659-y

Robots and self-driving cars could soon benefit from a new kind of brain-inspired hardware that can allegedly detect movement and react faster than a human. A new study published in the journal Nature Communications details how an international team built their neuromorphic temporal-attention hardware system to speed up automated driving decisions.

The problem with current robotic vision and self-driving vehicles is a significant delay in processing what they see. While today’s top AI programs can recognize objects accurately, the calculations are so complex that they can take up to half a second to complete...

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Nature-inspired navigation system helps robots traverse complex environments without GPS

A bio-inspired system could enhance robot navigation in real-world environments
Performance of the insect-inspired navigation component. The graph shows the AntBot- inspired Spiking Neural Network (red) maintaining a significantly lower positional drift over time compared to conventional Visual-Inertial Odometry (blue) in a challenging desert environment. Credit: (2025). DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.5674916

Robots could soon be able to autonomously complete search and rescue missions, inspections, complex maintenance operations and various other real-world tasks. To do this, however, they should be able to smoothly navigate unknown and complex environments without breaking down or getting stuck, which would require human intervention.

Most autonomous navigation systems rely on global positioning systems (GPS), which can provide information about where a robot is located ...

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