Although the deep ocean floor may seem isolated from life on the rest of the planet, it actually plays a vital role in the carbon cycle. Scientists are now gaining a better understanding of that role, thanks to a tracked robotic underwater rover.

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If an ant encounters a gap too wide for it to cross, the insect will sometimes signal other ants to form a bridge of their linked bodies. Such behaviour has now been copied in a small four-legged robot, that may inspire better search-and-rescue bots.

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A few years ago we first heard about DARPA's Subterranean Challenge, a competition in which teams were using robots to explore underground environments. A consortium known as Team CERBERUS has recently been awarded the US$2 million top prize.

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When you're carrying a heavy load, it can be pretty difficult walking across flat ground, let alone climbing stairs. The Koma 1.5 is designed to help, by alternately acting as a powered buggy or a two-legged lower-body exoskeleton.

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Increasingly, robots are being used to autonomously clean floors and other surfaces in places like airports and hospitals. You have to wonder, though … how do they know when a floor is sufficiently clean? A new module could soon tell them.

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When leaping geckos crash head-first into vertical surfaces such as tree trunks, they're able to hang onto that surface instead of bouncing off and falling to the ground. Scientists have discovered what allows them to do so, and copied the capability in a small robot.

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When it comes to robots designed for traversing rough terrain, there are typically treaded and legged models. The new Tready robot, however, combines the best of both approaches, by utilizing its four treaded "flippers."

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Even in non-pandemic times, the Great Barrier Reef is still a difficult place for much of the world's population to get to. That's where Teleportal.Fish comes in, as it allows anyone to virtually visit the reef via a live link to an underwater robot.

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For more than five years, a team has been developing and testing control software under Alphabet's X moonshot factory, aimed at making industrial robots smarter and easier to use. Now the project has branched out into a new company called Intrinsic.

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Robotic hands do show a lot of promise for various applications, but their mechanical complexity still limits their possible uses. A new air-powered hand is much simpler, but still dextrous enough to be utilized to play a video game.

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