It looks like a creation from Frankenstein’s lab: a robot with tentacles modelled on an octopus — the world’s first entirely soft robot.

The first prototype has six silicone legs designed for locomotion, while two specialized arms use artificial muscles, motors and sensors to detect and grasp objects. A spring-like structure inside these tentacles, made from a shape-memory alloy, can expand, contract or bend in any direction with… read more

Microsoft Research | Deep Neural Networks for Speech and Image Processing: Neural networks are experiencing a renaissance, thanks to a new mathematical formulation, known as restricted Boltzmann machines, and the availability of powerful GPUs and increased processing power.

Unlike past neural networks, these new ones can have many layers and thus are called “deep neural networks”; and because they are a machine-learning technique, the technology is also known as… read more

A new robot developed by David Dorhout and colleagues from Dorhout R&D is designed to plant seeds in a field while coordinating with a gang of other robotic farmhands, according to New Scientist.

The robot can walk in any direction while avoiding obstacles, using a sensor underneath its body to detect where seeds have already been planted. Once it finds an untouched patch, it drills a hole… read more