The physical body and its interaction with the environment shape robot behavior, simplify control, and minimize computation.

Coordinating the motion between lower and upper limbs and aligning limb control with perception are substantial challenges in robotics, particularly in dynamic environments. To this end, we introduce an approach for enabling legged mobile manipulators to play badminton, a task that requires precise coordination of perception, locomotion, and arm swinging. We propose a unified reinforcement learning–based

Achieving lifelike autonomy remains a long-term aspiration, yet soft robots so far have mostly demonstrated rudimentary physical intelligence that relies on manipulation of external stimuli to generate continuous motion. To realize autonomous physical intelligence (API) capable of self-regulated sensing, decision-making, and actuation, a promising approach is creating nonlinear time-lag feedback embedded

High-speed legged navigation in discrete and geometrically complex environments is a challenging task because of the high–degree-of-freedom dynamics and long-horizon, nonconvex nature of the optimization problem. In this work, we propose a hierarchical navigation pipeline for legged robots that can traverse such environments at high speed. The proposed pipeline consists of a planner and tracker module

Physical control embodies motion intelligence in soft robots via self-regulating oscillations, sequences, and reactions.

Using body morphology and touch sensing to simplify control strategies can boost versatility in aerial physical interaction.

A big-budget flop about terraforming Mars had a ground-aerial robot team predating Perseverance and Ingenuity.

Europa, a moon of Jupiter, is a high-priority target for space exploration because of its potential to harbor life. A landed mission concept to collect and analyze samples for signs of life was developed over the past decade. Operationally, a critical challenge for such a mission is that the surface environment at the spatial scale of the lander is not well known, requiring that such a mission be capable

A neuroprosthesis decodes short bits of neural activity and synthesizes speech synchronously with a user's vocal intent.

A human-shaped robotic hand offers unparalleled versatility and fine motor skills, enabling it to perform a broad spectrum of tasks with precision, power, and robustness. Across the paleontological record and animal kingdom, we see a wide range of alternative hand and actuation designs. Understanding the morphological design space and the resulting emergent behaviors can not only aid our understanding

Octopuses exploit an efficient neuromuscular hierarchy to achieve complex dexterous body manipulation, integrating sensor-rich suckers, in-arm embodied computation, and centralized higher-level reasoning. Here, we take inspiration from the hierarchical intelligence of the octopus and demonstrate how, by exploiting the fluidic energy and information capacity of simple suction cups, soft computational

Revealing the evolved mechanisms that give rise to collective behavior is a central objective in the study of cellular and organismal systems. In addition, understanding the algorithmic basis of social interactions in a causal and quantitative way offers an important foundation for subsequently quantifying social deficits. Here, with virtual reality technology, we used virtual robot fish to reverse

Bioinspired mobile robots move with comparable efficiency to their animal counterparts but lag by more than an order of magnitude in system-level energy density because of battery limitations. This Review quantifies this energy gap, evaluates hardware strengths and current battery weaknesses, and proposes benchmarking frameworks for future technologies. Using Spot as a case study, we identify the battery

Immersive virtual reality reveals that a simple control model from fish schooling can be used to control autonomous vehicles.

One of the twists in Companion depends on faulty assumptions about the internal anatomy of a humanoid robot.

Patterning planar muscle layers can create biohybrid robots capable of unique and controllable muscle activity.

Recent advancements in large-scale additive manufacturing have extended its application in the building industry, delivering notable gains in productivity, efficiency, environmental sustainability, and safety compared with traditional construction methods. Aerial additive manufacturing (aerial AM), which uses aerial robots for unbounded construction tasks, offers distinct advantages, such as scalability

Entomopathogenic nematodes (EPNs) exhibit a bending-elastic instability, or kink, before becoming airborne, a feature previously hypothesized but not substantiated to enhance jumping performance. Here, we provide the evidence that this kink is crucial for improving launch performance. We demonstrate that EPNs actively modulate their aspect ratio, forming a liquid-latched α-shaped loop over a slow timescale

Robots are being deployed in many sectors in Africa, from agriculture to education, and research activities are growing fast.

For flying insects, the transition from flight to surface locomotion requires effective touchdown maneuvers that allow stable landings on a variety of surfaces. Landing behaviors of insects are diverse, with some using more controlled flight approaches to landing, whereas others dampen collision impacts with parts of their bodies. The landing approaches of real insects inspired our current work, where

Quadcopter drones are capable of executing complex aerobatic maneuvers when controlled manually by skilled pilots but are limited to simple aerobatic actions when flying autonomously in open spaces. As such, this study introduces a comprehensive system that enables drones to generate and execute sophisticated aerobatic maneuvers in complex environments with dense obstacle distributions. A universal

The use of emotional words and expressive voices in robots alters the attribution of agency and experience by humans.

Magnetic fields enable remote manipulation of objects and are ideal for medical applications because they pass through human tissue harmlessly. This capability is promising for surgical robots, allowing navigation deeper into the human anatomy and accessing organs beyond the reach of current technologies. However, magnetic manipulation is typically limited to a maximum two–degrees-of-freedom orientation

Future marine operations objectives and tasks require a paradigm shift from robots to autonomous robotic organizations (AROs). These AROs must have advanced cooperative skills, control capabilities, and resilience both as individuals and as heterogeneous robot teams operating in space and air, on the sea surface, and underwater.

Operating in the brain for deep-seated tumors or surgical targets for epilepsy is technically demanding and normally requires a large craniotomy with its attendant risk and morbidity. Neuroendoscopic surgery has the potential to reduce risk and morbidity by permitting surgical access through a small incision with burr hole and a narrow corridor through the brain. However, current endoscopic neurosurgical

An untethered crawling robot is self-powered by embedding a deformable battery cell within each actuation module.

Locomotors traversing arboreal environments must often leap across large gaps to land on small-diameter supports. Balancing these dynamic landings is challenging because of high incident momentum, restricted foothold options, and reduced capacity to produce reaction torques on narrow supports. We hypothesized that leg length control to enhance branch reaction control authority would markedly expand

Research on miniature deep-sea robots is an emerging field focused on the development of deployable, compact devices capable of interacting with the unique environments and organisms of the deep ocean. In this study, we present a design strategy for a centimeter-scale deep-sea soft actuator, weighing 16 grams, that incorporates bistable chiral metamaterials and tube-sealed shape memory alloys. According

Torque and continuous rotation are fundamental methods of actuation and manipulation in rigid robots. Soft robot arms use soft materials and structures to mimic the passive compliance of biological arms that bend and extend. This use of compliance prevents soft arms from continuously transmitting and exerting torques to interact with their environment. Here, we show how relying on patterning structures

Rehabilitation robotics aims to promote activity-dependent reorganization of the nervous system. However, people with paralysis cannot generate sufficient activity during robot-assisted rehabilitation and, consequently, do not benefit from these therapies. Here, we developed an implantable spinal cord neuroprosthesis operating in a closed loop to promote robust activity during walking and cycling assisted

The integration of social robots into family environments raises critical questions about their long-term influence on family interactions. This study explores the potential of social robots as conversational catalysts in human-human dyadic interaction, focusing on enhancing high-quality, reciprocal conversations between parents and children during dialogic coreading activities. With the increasing

Exosuit with two-stage mechanism transmits force from a single motor to multiple muscle groups during manual handling tasks.

Robotic locomotion has shown substantial advancements, yet robots still lack the versatility and agility shown by animals navigating complex terrains. This limits their applicability in complex environments where they could be highly beneficial. Unlike existing robots that rely on intricate perception systems to construct models of both themselves and their surroundings, a more bioinspired approach

Telesurgery has the potential to overcome geographical barriers in surgical care, encouraging its deployment in areas with sparse surgical expertise. Despite successful in-human experiments and substantial technological progress, the adoption of telesurgery remains slow. In this Review, we analyze the reasons for this slow adoption. First, we identify various contexts for telesurgery and highlight

Although legged robots have demonstrated effective mobility in some natural settings, as robot size decreases, obstacles in their environment become challenging to overcome. Small arthropods scale obstacles many times their size through jumps powered by mechanisms that overcome speed and power limitations of muscle alone. The motivation for this study was to explore the marriage of impulsive (jumping)

Humans exhibit a particular compliant behavior in interactions with their environment. Facilitated by fast physical reasoning, humans are able to rapidly alter their compliance, enhancing robustness and safety in active environments. Transferring these capabilities to robotics is of utmost importance particularly as major space agencies begin investigating the potential of cooperative robotic teams

The family movie The Wild Robot illustrates the rigors of real-world field robotics.

A shift toward a democratized, bimodal model of research would allow soft robotics to realize its full potential.

Somatosensory cortex stimulation enabled restoration of tactile feedback, permitting bionic hand users to discern objects.

Navigating and exploring the surfaces of bodies of water allow swimming robots to perform a range of measurements while efficiently communicating and harvesting energy from the Sun. Such environments are often highly unstructured and cluttered with plant matter, animals, and debris, which require robots to move swiftly. We report a fast (5.1 centimeters per second translation and 195 degrees per second

Therapeutic protocols involving subretinal injection, which hold the promise of saving or restoring sight, are challenging for surgeons because they are at the limits of human motor and perceptual abilities. Excessive or insufficient indentation of the injection cannula into the retina or motion of the cannula with respect to the retina can result in retinal trauma or incorrect placement of the therapeutic

Cultured muscle tissue serves as a power source in biohybrid robots that demonstrate diverse motions. However, current designs typically only drive simple substrates on a small scale, limiting flexibility and controllability. To address this, we proposed a biohybrid hand with multijointed fingers powered by multiple muscle tissue actuators (MuMuTAs), bundles of thin muscle tissues. The MuMuTA can provide

In biomimetic design, researchers recreate existing biological structures to form functional devices. For biohybrid robotic swimmers assembled with tissue engineering, this is problematic because most devices operate at different length scales than their naturally occurring counterparts, resulting in reduced performance. To overcome these challenges, here, we demonstrate how machine learning–directed

Deploying machine vision for wearable robot control faces challenges in terms of usability, reliability, privacy, and costs.

Micro air vehicles (MAVs) capable of high-speed autonomous navigation in unknown environments have the potential to improve applications like search and rescue and disaster relief, where timely and safe navigation is critical. However, achieving autonomous, safe, and high-speed MAV navigation faces systematic challenges, necessitating reduced vehicle weight and size for high-speed maneuvering, strong

Snap-through, a rapid transition of a system from an equilibrium state to a nonadjacent equilibrium state, is a valuable design element of soft devices for converting a monolithic stimulus into systematic responses with impulsive motions. A common way to benefit from snap-through is to embody it within structures and materials, such as bistable structures. Torque-reversal mechanisms discovered in nature

Learning complex behaviors by humanoid robots could be achieved with natural interactions aided by large language models.

"Sunny," the new Apple TV series, explores what happens if robot assistants develop emotions.

Humans excel at applying learned behavior to unlearned situations. A crucial component of this generalization behavior is our ability to compose/decompose a whole into reusable parts, an attribute known as compositionality. One of the fundamental questions in robotics concerns this characteristic: How can linguistic compositionality be developed concomitantly with sensorimotor skills through associative

Robots have to adjust their motor behavior to changing environments and variable task requirements to successfully operate in the real world and physically interact with humans. Thus, robotics strives to enable a broad spectrum of adjustable motor behavior, aiming to mimic the human ability to function in unstructured scenarios. In humans, motor behavior arises from the integrative action of the central

Aerial insects are exceptionally agile and precise owing to their small size and fast neuromotor control. They perform impressive acrobatic maneuvers when evading predators, recovering from wind gust, or landing on moving objects. Flapping-wing propulsion is advantageous for flight agility because it can generate large changes in instantaneous forces and torques. During flapping-wing flight, wings

Despite the advances in bionic reconstruction of missing limbs, the control of robotic limbs is still limited and, in most cases, not felt to be as natural by users. In this study, we introduce a control approach that combines robotic design based on postural synergies and neural decoding of synergistic behavior of spinal motoneurons. We developed a soft prosthetic hand with two degrees of actuation

For trained individuals such as athletes and musicians, learning often plateaus after extensive training, known as the “ceiling effect.” One bottleneck to overcome it is having no prior physical experience with the skill to be learned. Here, we challenge this issue by exposing expert pianists to fast and complex finger movements that cannot be performed voluntarily, using a hand exoskeleton robot that

A robot body is not a shield from discrimination in John Scalzi's science fiction novel Head On.

Robotics history is still HIS story, but Women in Robotics is working hard to include HER story in the future of robotics.

Robotics research is rooted in a diversity of ideas, so roboticists should embrace a diverse set of people.

Swarm robots offer fascinating opportunities to perform complex tasks beyond the capabilities of individual machines. Just as a swarm of ants collectively moves large objects, similar functions can emerge within a group of robots through individual strategies based on local sensing. However, realizing collective functions with individually controlled microrobots is particularly challenging because

Haptic devices typically rely on rigid actuators and bulky power supply systems, limiting wearability. Soft materials improve comfort, but careful distribution of stiffness is required to ground actuation forces and enable load transfer to the skin. We present Haptiknit, an approach in which soft, wearable, knit textiles with embedded pneumatic actuators enable programmable haptic display. By integrating