Robotics

Brain-computer interfaces are an emerging assistive technology, enabling people with paralysis to type on computer screens or manipulate robotic prostheses just by thinking about moving their own bodies. For years, investigational BCIs used in clinical trials have required cables to connect the sensing array in the brain to computers that decode the signals and use them to drive external devices.

Inside an Amazon facility, employees and robot work together to ready products for customers. On one side of the building, yellow tote bins bearing partially completed orders, ride down a conveyor. At the end of the conveyor, a robot arm called a palletizer/depalletizer stacks them on a pallet as if playing a three-dimensional game of Tetris.

Last year, a team of biologists and computer scientists created novel, tiny self-healing biological machines from frog cells called "Xenobots" that could move around, push a payload, and even exhibit collective behavior in the presence of a swarm of other Xenobots. The same team has now created life forms that self-assemble a body from single cells, do not require muscle cells to move, and even demonstrate the capability of recordable memory.

Over the next few months, NavyX will carry on its work with Uncrewed Surface Vessel, while also examining how these vessels can deliver across the range of military operations including surveillance and force protection.

In recent years there have been exciting breakthroughs in wearable technologies, like smartwatches that can monitor your breathing and blood oxygen levels. But what about a wearable that can detect how you move as you do a physical activity or play a sport, and could potentially even offer feedback on how to improve your technique?

Teijin Limited together with Applied Electric Vehicles has developed a highly energy-efficient low- speed electric vehicle prototype for autonomous driving systems and other mobility applications that are expected to help realize zero-emission mobility.

While technologies are emerging for cities to be independent in food, water and energy, safe and pleasant, progress is mostly poor and global warming threatens migrants overwhelming cities. By all means, let us see the smart city advances take place that are in the IDTechEx report, "Smart Cities Market 2021-2041: Energy, Food, Water, Materials, Transportation Forecasts", but it would be prudent to try to reverse the move to cities that the UN and others see resulting in 70-80% of us in them by 2050.

Engineers have developed an electronics-free, entirely soft robot shaped like a dragonfly that can skim across water and react to environmental conditions such as pH, temperature or the presence of oil. The proof-of-principle demonstration could be the precursor to more advanced, autonomous, long-range environmental sentinels for monitoring a wide range of potential telltale signs of problems.

Join the IDTechEx webinar Wednesday 31 March 2021 - An introduction to urban air mobility and air taxi services; The basics of eVTOL aircraft design architectures; Background into ongoing eVTOL projects for passenger transportation; and much more!