The word “robot” was coined by the Czech writer Karel Čapek in a 1920 play called Rossum’s Universal Robots, and is derived from the Czech robota, meaning “drudgery” or “servitude”.

Apr 9, 2025 · A hopping, insect-sized robot can jump over gaps or obstacles, traverse rough, slippery, or slanted surfaces, and perform aerial acrobatic maneuvers, while using a fraction of …

Jun 5, 2025 · A new system enables a robot to “think ahead” and consider thousands of potential motion plans simultaneously, allowing the robot to solve a multistep problem in a few seconds.

6 days ago · A flexible robot can help emergency responders search through rubble SPROUT, developed by Lincoln Laboratory and University of Notre Dame researchers, is a vine robot …

Jan 16, 2025 · Technology Humanoid robot learns to waltz by mirroring people's movements An AI trained on motion capture recordings can help robots smoothly imitate human actions, such …

Jan 15, 2025 · New insect-scale microrobots can fly more than 100 times longer than previous versions. The new bots, also significantly faster and more agile, could someday be used to …

Jan 28, 2025 · MIT Associate Professor Luca Carlone works to give robots a more human-like perception of their environment, so they can interact with people safely and seamlessly.

May 8, 2025 · MIT engineers developed a ping-pong-playing robot that quickly estimates the speed and trajectory of an incoming ball and precisely hits it to a desired location on the table.

Apr 24, 2025 · MIT roboticists developed a way to cut through data noise and help robots focus on the features in a scene that are most relevant for assisting humans. The system could be …

Nov 20, 2024 · A pigeon-inspired robot has solved the mystery of how birds fly without the vertical tail fins that human-designed aircraft rely on. Its makers say the prototype could eventually …