Robots

Robotics is the science of creating artificial intelligence. From the simplest of automated machines to the most complex “real” transformers, robots are more ubiquitious than you might imagine.

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Could a computer chip implanted in our brains make the necessity of actually learning anything, like a language, obsolete because knowledge will be available for streaming 24/7?

By Patrick J. Kiger

Is ChatGPT the end of education as we know it, or just the beginning?

By Jesslyn Shields

Computer-generated artificial celebrities, created with cutting-edge technology, have become some of the hottest social media stars on the planet, selling everything from insurance to perfume.

By Patrick J. Kiger

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Maillardet's Automaton, built around 1800, can write poems and draw pictures and was a precursor to today's sophisticated robots.

By Patrick J. Kiger

A Google engineer made headlines for claiming that an AI called LaMDA had become sentient or conscious. While many AI scientists disagreed, what would it take for an AI to ever become sentient?

By Chris Pollette

Stanford researchers emulated the feet and legs of a peregrine falcon to enable a flying robot to land and perch on various surfaces, which could have lasting implications for future drone design and use.

By Patrick J. Kiger

Famed composer Ludwig von Beethoven died leaving just a few notes for his 10th Symphony. More than 200 years later, scientists use artificial intelligence to finish the job.

By Ahmed Elgammal

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Heck, it's even hard for some people to have common sense.

By Mayank Kejriwal

A hospital stay can be a stressful experience for anybody, and especially for a child. But a smiling new robot named Robin plays games, tells stories and comforts children in need of a friend.

By Jesslyn Shields

AI already can outperform humans in some narrow domains, but in the future AI may go inside the human brain to enhance intellectual capabilities, turning users into human-machine hybrids.

By Patrick J. Kiger

Many people worry that drones will invade their privacy, though experts say the fear is greater than the actual threat.

By Patrick J. Kiger

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A new robot ant uses the same technology desert ants use to safely, efficiently navigate through the searing Saharan sun.

By Jesslyn Shields

Well, heck yeah, we can, and we have. Let's take a look.

By Robert Lamb

Stanley Kubrick's sci-fi masterpiece '2001: A Space Odyssey' premiered 50 years ago, and it got a lot of things right. But what about HAL? How close are we to those kinds of capabilities?

By Oisin Curran

With the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots heating up, we step back a few decades to look at the first human death by robot.

By Bryan Young

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The android known as FEDOR used pistols to display its decision making and dexterity, officials said, not as a preview of robot warfare.

By Patrick J. Kiger

We've taught the machines to make decisions, but we haven't been paying as much attention to how and why they're learning.

By Patrick J. Kiger

How can you keep motors from overheating without bulky fans and cooling systems? Engineers looked to the human body for inspiration.

By Patrick J. Kiger

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A new application called Statcheck is bringing some academics a lot closer to AI. Not everyone's a fan.

By Kate Kershner

What are the benefits of growing living tissue in a lab and fusing it to a robotic body? This Fw:Thinking video explores our cyborg future.

By Laurie L. Dove

A robot to simulate mudskipper locomotion gives scientists a look into the success of the first land vertebrate ancestors, and points to our future on other planets.

By Jesslyn Shields

For the first time, Israeli researchers have developed a system that lets a human use brain waves to control nanobots in a cockroach. How could that help your health?

By Patrick J. Kiger

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And someday soft-bodied bots like this could slither in and out of your belly and revolutionize biomedical technology.

By Robert Lamb

There's more to replacing human riders than just using cool tech, as the advancement helps solve a serious human rights issue.

By Chris Opfer