Robotics

Building a wall by stacking randomly shaped boulders could almost be the definition of hard work – both physically and mentally. It's the sort of thing we might want robots to do, so it should come as no surprise that one has in fact just done it.

Singapore company Fourier Intelligence has released a video showing at least a dozen of its GR-1 humanoids, set for customer delivery this year. But while the GR-1 might have the best hips in robotics, it ain't gonna win any rug-cutting contests.

Earlier this year, we heard about some tiny robots that used a bio-inspired mechanism to jump high into the air. The makers of those devices have now tweaked the design, creating bots that jump very long distances.

Pleurocystitid was a marine organism that existed almost 450 million years ago, long before the first dinosaurs. Scientists have now built a soft-bodied robotic replica of it, which could inspire new methods of locomotion for future robots.

When it comes down to it, most telepresence robots are just remote-control tablets that can be steered around a room. The VRoxy system is different in that its robot replicates the user's movements, plus it auto-pilots itself to different locations.

While seeing-eye dogs can be very helpful to the blind, raising and training them is a long and expensive process. Scientists have therefore recently started investigating the possibility of outsourcing the job to dog-like quadruped robots.

Two years ago we first heard about the Swiss-Mile Robot, a quadruped bot with powered wheels on the ends of its four legs. It's now in for some competition, as China's LimX Dynamics has announced it own wheeled quadruped, called the W1.

Early humanoid robots probably won't be able to do much that Fraunhofer's self-balancing evoBOT can't do much faster, and its new autonomous, omnidirectional O³dyn pallet jack looks like another slam dunk for logistics and warehousing.

In order to function safely alongside human workers, robotic arms shouldn't be hard and unyielding. An experimental new arm was designed with that fact in mind, as it mimics soft n' squishy elephant trunks and octopus tentacles.

Japan's giant human-piloted, humanoid Gundam-style robots are neat and everything, but … why walk if you can roll on four wheels? That's what the Archax does, transforming between robot and vehicle configurations.

After a year of development, Figure has released video footage of its humanoid robot walking – and it's looking pretty sprightly compared to its commercial competition. It's our first look at a prototype that should be doing useful work within months.

The extraordinary Hadrian X bricklaying robot rocks up to a building site looking like a regular truck, then extends a 32-m (105-ft) boom arm and starts precisely laying up to 300 large masonry blocks an hour. It's pretty remarkable to watch.

Most robots walk like they've soiled themselves; this one walks with a crazy amount of personality. Disney is getting very good at combining the art of character animation with the science of bipedal robotics, and the results are ... adorable.

While there are a number of optical systems that provide robotic hands with a sense of touch, most of those systems are flat, so they're confined to the fingertips. A new MIT system, however, works along the entire length of each finger.

Researchers have developed a prototype robot that is able to perform a breast examination and sense lumps that may indicate cancer. While still in the early stages, they say their robot could improve the likelihood of catching breast cancer early.