Huge Media Interest: Why octopus arms don’t stick together?

“Octopus arms have a built-in mechanism that prevents the suckers from grabbing octopus skin,” says Guy Levy (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), the lead author of the work, which appears today in Current Biology. Their article has received a huge interest from the media such as Nature, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Daily Mail, IBT, The Scientist, National…

STIFF-FLOP Newsletter out now!

The STIFF-FLOP consortium has now published their end-of-year newsletter which is available here. It contains the latest news items about: recent progress and achievements of the project; RoNeX – the commercialised integration platform hardware; first safety and benchmarking tests; a list of peer-reviewed papers and invited keynote speeches; STIFF-FLOP exhibitions; Advisory groups.

STIFF-FLOP: 1 of 5 Cool Robots funded by the EU

Prior to the festival, Robot Safari received excellent coverage in Design Week, the Daily Telegraph and Mail Online. It also received a prominent half-page listing in Time Out London. As the festival opened, further coverage appeared, including in Phys.org, Gizmag and Popular Science. The BBC published a video online with footage from the festival and…

STIFF-FLOP at the Science Museum

During the European Robotics Week, at the Science Museum in London we’ll meet swimming, flapping or crawling robots mimicking real animals. The EU-funded STIFF-FLOP project will be showing a robotic arm inspired by the softness and agility of an elephant’s trunk and by the octopus’ ability to find food by exploring small cavities in rocks.…

King’s College London featured on BBC TWO Newsnight

In a piece on how killer robots may affect the future of military warfare, BBC 2 reports on how robotics is used today and how they may develop into weapons. The UN Human Rights Council in Geneva is debating on the ethical use of “killer robots,” with UN rapporteur Christof Heyns calling for a halt…

Rich Walker (Shadow) on SPIEGEL TV

Rich Walker (Shadow Robot Company) has been working with the Centre for Robotics Research (CoRe) in many projects (e.g. HANDLE, STIFF-FLOP). He was interviewed by the German news magazine SPIEGEL TV on the Shadow Hand. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG7i8wXEyRQ]