Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a new kind of lens that can bring an entire scene into sharp focus at once — no matter how far away or close different parts of the scene are.

Rumaisa Azeem and Andrew Hundt, co-first authors of the paper. The Breakdown:  Robots powered by popular AI models failed multiple safety and discrimination tests. The tests revealed deeper risks, including bias and unsafe physical behavior. The researchers call for regular risk assessments before AI systems control real-world robots. *** Robots powered by popular [...]

Carnegie Mellon researchers will collaborate on a federally funded project to wholly rethink and redesign wheelchairs to incorporate new technologies and offer greater mobility.

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science will contribute to a newly launched National Science Foundation (NSF) AI Research Institute to develop artificial intelligence assistants capable of trustworthy, sensitive and context-aware interactions with people.

Fusing artificial intelligence and imagination, researchers from Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science have developed a tool that uses text prompts to help people — and even robots — bring ideas to life with Lego bricks.

Carnegie Mellon University faculty and students recently experienced something few ever have: weightlessness. Aboard a plane that follows an unusual flight path – steep climbs followed by dramatic dives – members of the Robotics Exploration Lab in CMU's Robotics Institute (RI) put their research through critical tests. During each parabolic arc, the plane creates about [...]

After scoring a goal, soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo will run to the sideline, leap into the air, spin 180 degrees, land with arms outstretched and shout “Siu.” When LeBron James hits a clutch shot, he celebrates with the “Silencer,” rhythmically stomping his feet while forcefully pushing down with his arms to quiet any question of [...]

Two sailors use small amphibious robots to perform real-time mapping and navigation around a lakeshore. In another exercise, sailors monitor a robot reconnaissance vehicle crawling through a maze. They reveal a simulated hazardous object in the field. These scenes aren’t from military training, but from a final training competition led by the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Academy (CMRA). [...]

Trees, vegetation, rocks, unpredictable terrain and the lack of clearly-defined roads — or roads at all — won’t stop an autonomous, off-road vehicle developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute. As self-driving taxis, trucks and other vehicles pop up on city streets and highways, challenges remain for autonomous vehicles designed for mining, search [...]

Researchers from the Human Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) and Robotics Institute (RI) at Carnegie Mellon University introduced a novel method for fabricating functional flat-to-shape objects using a computer-controlled sewing machine.  The team includes Sapna Tayal, undergraduate student in the School of Design; Lea Albaugh, Mark Stehlik postdoctoral teaching fellow at HCII; James McCann, associate professor [...]

Robots with human-level dexterity have the potential to revolutionize object manipulation and reconstruction tasks, but achieving this level of dexterity comes with challenges, particularly when it comes to robots handling a wide variety of low-texture objects with high precision.  To address this challenge and push the boundaries of current robotic tactile sensing, RI Ph.D student [...]

Researchers at the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), created CHARCHA ( Computer Human Assessment for Recreating Characters with Human Actions), a secure and personalized verification protocol that allows an individual’s likeness to appear in generative video content. The team was inspired to create CHARCHA to respond to ethical issues [...]

An SCS researcher is using robotics to speed up e-waste recycling for flat-screen displays. A researcher from Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science is using robotics to improve e-waste recycling. E-waste is one of the fastest-growing types of waste in the world, with an estimated 62 million tons produced in 2022 alone. [...]

Robots deployed in the home carry immense potential to improve people’s quality of life. Robots for cleaning, companionship, security, healthcare needs, and more can travel through home environments and assist with a multitude of tasks, making human-robot interaction an area of particular interest to many roboticists. However, despite the convenience of in-home robots, there lies [...]

Sheng-Yu Wang, fifth-year Ph.D. at the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute. Sheng-Yu Wang, fifth-year Ph.D. student at the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute, has received a Google Fellowship for his work in data attribution for text-to-image models. Wang is advised by Jun-Yan Zhu, assistant professor at the Robotics Institute.  The Google Ph.D. Fellowship [...]

A research team at Carnegie Mellon teamed up with Meta FAIR, the University of California, Berkeley, Technical University Dresden in Germany and the Centre for Tactile Internet with Human-in-the-Loop (CeTI) to propose NeuralFeels, a machine learning model that combines vision and touch sensing on a robot hand to reconstruct and track unseen objects.  Traditional sensing [...]

What if the future of energy could be as limitless as the stars? As nuclear fission powers today's reactors, researchers are looking toward nuclear fusion as a cleaner, safer, and long-lasting source of energy.  Nuclear power plants are largely considered as one of the most reliable sources of energy. Inside the plants, reactors use fission [...]

Many people learn how to ride a bike at some point in their lives. When children are learning, adults can only guide them to a certain point. A large portion of developing this new skill depends on independent trial and error from the child.  After days of practice, and perhaps a fall or two, children [...]