Controlled by magnetic fields, tiny robot climbs inclines, swims, and carries loads twice its weight

Robot science does more than just crunch numbers.

There’s an urgent demand for new antimicrobial compounds that are effective against constantly emerging drug-resistant bacteria. Two robotic chemical-synthesizing machines, named Symphony X and Overture, have joined the search. Their specialty is creating custom nanoscale structures that mimic nature’s proven designs. They’re also fast, able to assemble dozens of compounds at a time.

What if handheld tools know what needs to be done and were even able to guide and help inexperienced users to complete jobs that require skill? Researchers at the University of Bristol have developed and started studying a novel concept in robotics - intelligent handheld robots.

What do you know? There is now a world standard for capturing and conveying the knowledge that robots possess—or, to get philosophical about it, an ontology for automatons.

To make cars as safe as possible, we crash them into walls to pinpoint weaknesses and better protect people who use them.

From joy to sadness, facial expressions could soon be decipherable to robots.

As nanotechnology makes possible a world of machines too tiny to see, researchers are finding ways to combine living organisms with nonliving machinery to solve a variety of problems.

The film Chappie, which hit theaters Mar. 6, is about the first robot with the ability to think and feel for himself. The filmmakers claim that this story "will change the way the world looks at robots and humans forever."

Eve, an artificially-intelligent ‘robot scientist’ could make drug discovery faster and much cheaper, say researchers writing in the Royal Society journal Interface. The team has demonstrated the success of the approach as Eve discovered that a compound shown to have anti-cancer properties might also be used in the fight against malaria.