Bristol Robotics Laboratory

3D Printed Fingertip Feels Like Human Skin

Machines can beat the world's best chess player, but they cannot handle a chess piece as well as an infant. This lack of robot dexterity is partly because artificial grippers lack the fine tactile sense of the human fingertip, which is used to guide our hands as we pick up and handle objects.

Credit Card Sized Soft Pumps Power Wearable Artificial Muscles

Robotic clothing that is entirely soft and could help people to move more easily is a step closer to reality thanks to the development of a new flexible and lightweight power system for soft robotics.

How Drones Could Help Save our Most Endangered Species

A joint team flew to Cameroon in December to trial the use of drones, sensor technologies and deployment techniques to monitor populations of the Critically Endangered Kordofan giraffe at Bénoué National Park.

Facial recognition technology aims to detect emotional state in pigs

State-of-the-art facial recognition technology is being used in an attempt to detect different emotional states in pigs.

Growing bio-inspired shapes with hundreds of tiny robots

Hundreds of small robots can work in a team to create biology-inspired shapes - without an underlying master plan, purely based on local communication and movement. To achieve this, researchers introduced the biological principles of self-organisation to swarm robotics.

Grant to establish robotics centre for tackling nuclear waste

It will go towards the creation of the National Centre for Nuclear Robotics which is a multi-university project that has received funding and contributions totalling £40m to bring together a diverse consortium of experts in robotics, AI, sensors and radiation resilient embedded systems to address nuclear waste problems.

Urine powered displays

PEE POWER has been given a prime location at Glastonbury Festival just a few hundred metres from the Pyramid stage to showcase turning urine into electricity.

Wearable robotic tools for surgery

A collaborative team of researchers is to develop a wearable robotic system for minimally invasive surgery that will offer surgeons natural and dexterous movement as well as the ability to 'sense', 'see', control and safely navigate through the surgical environment.

Award for 3D printed bionic hands

Open Bionics is revolutionising the healthcare industry by using 3D scanning and 3D printing to dramatically cut the cost of fitting hand amputees with robotic prosthetics.

Artificial fingertip that feels

Pushing the boundaries of soft robotics, the open-source tactile fingertip, known as TacTip, is a 3D-printed tactile sensor that has been developed by the Tactile Robotics Team from Bristol Robotics Laboratory.

Standard highlighting the ethical hazards of robots is published

BSI, the business standards company has published BS 8611 Ethics design and application robots.

Smart bricks will transform how buildings work

Smart bricks capable of recycling wastewater and generating electricity from sunlight are being developed by a team of scientists.

Wearable energy generator uses urine to power wireless transmitter

This is the first self-sufficient system powered by a wearable energy generator based on microbial fuel cell technology.

'Pee-power' to light camps in disaster zones

It is hoped the pee-power technology will light cubicles in refugee camps, which are often dark and dangerous places particularly for women.

IDTechEx see a great future for electric quadcopters

The starting point for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is rarely military; it is at the other extreme with toy helicopters and predating professional UAV helicopters and so on. Despite the emphasis in the press, it is not all about improvement of batteries.

Drones employed to inspect easyJet's fleet of 220 Airbus aircraft

easyJet, the UK's largest airline, has announced it is working with the Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL), a partnership between the University of Bristol and the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol), to modify existing technology so that drones can be employed to inspect its fleet of 220 Airbus aircraft.

Artificial heart pumps human waste to power future robots

A new device that may be capable of pumping human waste into the 'engine room' of a self-sustaining robot has been created by a group of researchers.

Autonomous robot that eats sewage

Researchers at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory are working on an autonomous robot, dubbed EcoBot III.