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Northwestern University engineers have developed a new system for full-body motion capture — and it doesn’t require specialized rooms, expensive equipment, bulky cameras or an array of sensors. Instead, it requires a simple mobile device. Called MobilePoser, the new system leverages sensors already embedded within consumer mobile devices, including smartphones, smart watches and wireless earbuds. Using a combination of sensor data, machine learning and physics, MobilePoser accurately tracks a person’s full-body pose and global translation

Researchers from Japan explore how the domesticated flightless silkworm moth (Bombyx mori), a prominent insect model in olfactory research, uses wing flapping to manipulate airflow, enhancing their ability to detect distant pheromones. These findings highlight how moths guide pheromones to their odor sensors in antennae, and suggest potential applications for designing advanced robotic systems for odor source localization. This could inspire future innovations in drones and provide design guidelines for robots to locate odor sources.

Autonomous systems like drones, self-driving cars, and robots are becoming more common in our daily lives. However, they often struggle to “see” well in different environments — like bright sunlight, low light, or when objects blend into complex backgrounds. Interestingly, nature may already have the solution to this problem. Cats are known for their amazing vision in both bright light and darkness. Their eyes are uniquely adapted: during the day, vertical slit-shaped pupils help them

A new computer simulation of how our brains develop and grow neurons has been built by scientists from the University of Surrey. Along with improving our understanding of how the brain works, researchers hope that the models will contribute to neurodegenerative disease research and, someday, stem cell research that helps regenerate brain tissue. The research team used a technique called Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC), which helps fine-tune the model by comparing the simulation with real

Researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China have developed a soft robotic “finger” with a sophisticated sense of touch that can perform routine doctor office examinations, including taking a patient’s pulse and checking for abnormal lumps. This work was published October 9 in the Cell Press journal Cell Reports Physical Science. Such technology could make it easier for doctors to detect diseases such as breast cancer early on, when they are more

Miniature robots on the millimeter scale often lack the strength to transport instruments for endoscopic microsurgery through the body. Scientists at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) are now combining several millimeter-sized TrainBots into one unit and equipping them with improved “feet.” For the first time, the DKFZ team was able to perform an electric surgical procedure on a bile duct obstruction experimentally with a robotic convoy. The list of conceivable applications for miniature robots

Recent advances in computing and artificial intelligence, along with insights into infant learning, suggest that machine and deep learning techniques can help us study how infants transition from random exploratory movements to purposeful actions. Most research has focused on babies’ spontaneous movements, distinguishing between fidgety and non-fidgety behaviors. While early movements may seem chaotic, they reveal meaningful patterns as infants interact with their environment. However, we still lack understanding of how infants intentionally engage with

Imagine having to straighten up a messy kitchen, starting with a counter littered with sauce packets. If your goal is to wipe the counter clean, you might sweep up the packets as a group. If, however, you wanted to first pick out the mustard packets before throwing the rest away, you would sort more discriminately, by sauce type. And if, among the mustards, you had a hankering for Grey Poupon, finding this specific brand would

Large language models (LLMs) have developed rapidly in recent years and are becoming an integral part of our everyday lives through applications like ChatGPT. An article recently published in Nature Human Behaviour explains the opportunities and risks that arise from the use of LLMs for our ability to collectively deliberate, make decisions, and solve problems. Led by researchers from Copenhagen Business School and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, the interdisciplinary team