Cyborg Roaches Can Stab You With Needles
Imagine you are trapped under rubble after an earthquake and you see an electronics-covered cockroach with a spring-loaded needle on its back scuttling toward you. Although the sight might be unnerving, to say the least, this prototype paramedic cyborg, or “Paraborg,” might one day help deliver lifesaving aid to disaster victims who might be otherwise…
Video Friday: Digit Redecorates
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.Humanoids Summit Seoul: 22–23 September 2026, SEOULIROS 2026: 27 September–1 October 2026, PITTSBURGHCoRL 2026: 9–12 November…
Protecting Dynamic Industrial Robot Cable Carriers
This article is brought to you by Tsubaki KabelSchlepp.In modern automated manufacturing, six-axis articulated robots perform high-speed, multidirectional maneuvers under demanding operational cycles. However, as robot arms swivel, rotate, and extend, the electrical cables, fiber optics, and pneumatic hoses supplying them endure severe mechanical stress. Torsional twist, rapid acceleration, and repeated contact with machine structures…
The Best Way to Explore Lunar Craters Is a Giant Robot Ball
On a good day, the rock quarry in central Texas is about 370,000 kilometers (230,000 miles) from the moon. But last February, when Rishi Jangale watched his 1.8-meter-wide, 150-kilogram inflatable robot roll effortlessly over rocks, gravel, and wet clay, his imagination turned the quarry into the lunar surface instead.Jangale is an upbeat mechanical engineer nearing…
Video Friday: Meet Microduck
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.Humanoids Summit Seoul: 22–23 September 2026, SEOULIROS 2026: 27 September–1 October 2026, PITTSBURGHCoRL 2026: 9–12 November…
Differential Flatness-Based Modeling and Control of Cylindrical Microrobots Under Rotating Magnetic Fields
Cylindrical magnetic microrobots actuated by rotating magnetic fields offer significant potential for targeted biomedical applications due to their rolling locomotion and wireless operation. However, their motion is inherently constrained by nonholonomic dynamics, which, according to Brockett’s necessary condition, precludes smooth state feedback stabilization for simultaneous position and orientation control. Achieving robust, high-precision trajectory tracking, especially…
AI Companion Robots Are Closing the Human Connection in Modern Homes
This article is brought to you by Ollobot.From about 2017, individuals began to truly connect with the initial wave of companion robots. These devices had personality, moved around, joked, and answered when you spoke to them. Most early companion robots, however, were still limited by simple voice-command interactions and narrow functionality. Once the novelty wore…
Direct Force Compensation-Based Adaptive Hybrid Impedance Control for Dynamic Interaction Environments
The primary control objective in robotic interaction tasks has shifted from trajectory tracking accuracy to interaction force regulation. Impedance control enables compliant interaction by shaping the robot’s force response through a target impedance model. However, the dynamic response of conventional impedance control is fixed during parameter design, limiting its adaptability to varying interaction environments. To…
Data-Driven Finite-Iteration Learning Formation Control for Unknown Wheeled Mobile Robots
In this study, the fast formation control problem for wheeled mobile robots (WMRs), subject to unknown kinetic dynamics and a repetitive operational environment, is innovatively addressed by developing an efficient distributed data-driven finite-iteration learning formation control (DFLFC) approach. Firstly, by employing the finite-time control strategy, a distributed finite-iteration kinematic control scheme is developed to achieve…
Acceleration-Level Hierarchical Control of Redundant Robots via Multi-Projection Recurrent Neural Dynamics
Traditional methods for redundant robot control often encounter task execution failures caused by multi-task conflicts, degraded control accuracy from unmodeled dynamic uncertainties, and excessive joint jerk due to unconstrained decision variable derivatives. To resolve these issues, this paper introduces a multi-projection recurrent neural dynamics (MPRND) designed for the acceleration-level hierarchical control of redundant robotic systems.…