Robot ‘Olympians’ bring home the silver and $1.3million prize
Australian team wins historic top two spot in DARPA challenge
Six Aussie robots – Rat and Bear (track robots), Bluey and Bingo (four-legged robots) and H1 and H2 (flying drones) –...
Robotics
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Beware the robot bearing gifts
Study shows people open to manipulation by robots pretending to be their friend.
In a future filled with robots, those that pretend to be your friend could be more manipulative than those that exert...
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Meet the robots representing Australia at the ‘robot Olympics’
Six robots will compete in the DARPA Subterranean Challenge.
Even robots have dreams of winning gold - and now Australia has a chance at the DARPA Subterranean Challenge. This...
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Crashlanding geckos rely on their tails to get a grip
High-speed cameras reveal the extraordinary dynamics of gecko flight – and landing.
Crash landings are quite normal for geckos – it is their habit to launch themselves into leaps between trees to trave...
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Colour-changing chameleon-bot
Artificial ‘skin’ the first step towards colour-blending military camo.
Artificial camouflage may sound more like science fiction than science, but the possibility of donning a colour-chang...
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Magazine
How do mass drone displays work?
The Tokyo Olympic Opening Ceremony showed the spectacular potential of drones to join the party. ...
As Australia burned through 2019’s devastating Black Summer, a Change.org petition circulated calling for the cancell...
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The surprisingly complicated technology that goes into picking winners
Choosing and gathering an apple is simple for humans, but it’s a task that has frustrated robotic...
This article first appeared in Cosmos Weekly on 4 June 2021. For more stories like this, subscribe to Cosmos Weekly. ...
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Looking ‘weird’ protects robot lizards from predation
Turns out predators don’t like odd-looking prey.
It’s often thought that prey animals face a complicated biological paradox: how do they stand out to attract potentia...
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The surprisingly complicated technology that goes into picking winners
Choosing and gathering an apple is simple for humans, but it’s a task that has frustrated robotic...
Can robots be trained to pick up after us? A recent breakthrough in machine learning could point the way toward a muc...
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Where’s my flying car?
The Jetsons cartoons gave a boomer generation a vision of seemingly magical powered flying vehicl...
Backed by billions in venture capital and a recent IPO, one startup aims to have its flying taxi on the market in thr...
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You may have missed…
Stray science stories from last week to cheer up your Monday.
What does a robot think? Talking to yourself isn’t just for humans – it’s for robots, too. Alexa, Google and Si...
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Mars and Moon geology: past, present and future
Mars landers and Moon rocks star at this year’s LPSC.
One month after it landed on Mars and beamed back its first “I made it” messages, NASA’s Perseverance rover is limber...