Science Robotics最新文献

{"title":"Precise aggressive aerial maneuvers with sensorimotor policies","authors":"Tianyue Wu,&nbsp;Guangtong Xu,&nbsp;Zihan Wang,&nbsp;Junxiao Lin,&nbsp;Tianyang Chen,&nbsp;Yuze Wu,&nbsp;Zhichao Han,&nbsp;Zhiyang Liu,&nbsp;Fei Gao","doi":"10.1126/scirobotics.aeb0180","DOIUrl":"10.1126/scirobotics.aeb0180","url":null,"abstract":"<div >Precise aggressive maneuvers with lightweight onboard sensors remain a key bottleneck in fully exploiting the maneuverability of drones. Such maneuvers are critical for expanding the systems’ accessible area by navigating through narrow openings in the environment. One of the most relevant problems is aggressive traversal through narrow gaps with quadrotors under constraints in the special Euclidean group of three dimensions [<span><math><mrow><mi>SE</mi><mrow><mo>(</mo><mn>3</mn><mo>)</mo></mrow></mrow></math></span>], which requires the quadrotors to leverage a momentary tilted attitude and the asymmetry of the airframes to navigate through gaps. Here, we achieved such maneuvers by developing sensorimotor policies directly mapping onboard vision and proprioception into low-level control commands. The policies were trained using reinforcement learning (RL) with end-to-end policy distillation in simulation. We mitigated the model-free RL’s exploration challenge on the restricted solution space with an initialization strategy leveraging trajectories generated by a model-based planner. Careful sim-to-real design allowed the policy to control a quadrotor through narrow gaps with low clearances and high repeatability. For instance, the proposed method enabled a quadrotor to navigate a rectangular gap at a 5-centimeter clearance, tilted at an orientation up to 90°, without knowledge of the gap’s position or orientation. Without training on dynamic gaps, the policy could reactively servo the quadrotor to traverse through a moving gap. The proposed method was validated on challenging tracks of narrow, closely placed gaps. The flexibility of the policy learning method was demonstrated by developing policies on geometrically diverse gaps without relying on manually defined traversal poses and visual features.</div>","PeriodicalId":56029,"journal":{"name":"Science Robotics","volume":"11 115","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":27.5,"publicationDate":"2026-06-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.science.org/doi/reader/10.1126/scirobotics.aeb0180","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148209132","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Fusing LiDAR and vision to generate high-quality reconstructions","authors":"Amos Matsiko","doi":"10.1126/scirobotics.aej0223","DOIUrl":"10.1126/scirobotics.aej0223","url":null,"abstract":"<div >A neural radiance field–based reconstruction framework merging LiDAR and vision data achieves geometric accuracy.</div>","PeriodicalId":56029,"journal":{"name":"Science Robotics","volume":"11 114","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":27.5,"publicationDate":"2026-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148044912","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Moon needs robots","authors":"Robin R. Murphy","doi":"10.1126/scirobotics.aei3965","DOIUrl":"10.1126/scirobotics.aei3965","url":null,"abstract":"<div >Four science fiction works describe realistic construction and mining robots enabling human habitation of the Moon.</div>","PeriodicalId":56029,"journal":{"name":"Science Robotics","volume":"11 114","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":27.5,"publicationDate":"2026-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148044825","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Extreme dynamic symmetry enables omnidirectional and multifunctional robots","authors":"Jiaxun Liu,&nbsp;Boxi Xia,&nbsp;Boyuan Chen","doi":"10.1126/scirobotics.aec1725","DOIUrl":"10.1126/scirobotics.aec1725","url":null,"abstract":"<div >Symmetry is a central organizing principle in natural systems, yet its use as a unifying design strategy in robotics has largely remained limited to geometric form. We show that symmetry can instead be leveraged at the level of dynamic actuation capability. We introduce dynamic symmetry, the uniformity of a robot’s attainable center-of-mass accelerations, and formalize it through a measure coined as dynamic isotropy. Across more than 1000 simulated morphologies, we found that higher dynamic symmetry consistently improved trajectory tracking, task success, robustness, resiliency, and energy efficiency, with the benefits becoming most pronounced as dynamic isotropy approached its theoretical limit. To study this regime systematically, we developed Argus, a family of spherical robots designed to explore the effects of increasing dynamic symmetry. Members of the Argus family vary in their actuation geometry and dynamic symmetry level while sharing a common architectural principle: radially oriented linear actuators that directly shape the robot’s center-of-mass dynamics. Among them, we built a physical 20-leg Argus variant that achieved near-extreme dynamic isotropy and demonstrated orientation-invariant locomotion, agile traversal of cluttered and deformable terrain, rapid self-stabilization, and resilience to partial actuator failures. Its distributed sensing further enabled omnidirectional perception and object interaction during continuous motion. These results show that designing robots for symmetry not only in morphology but also in their attainable dynamics provides a powerful and general pathway toward agility, robustness, and multifunctionality in uncertain terrestrial and extraterrestrial environments.</div>","PeriodicalId":56029,"journal":{"name":"Science Robotics","volume":"11 114","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":27.5,"publicationDate":"2026-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148044836","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Embodied or virtually represented: Navigating the embodiment debate in human-robot interaction","authors":"Connor Esterwood,&nbsp;Xin Ye,&nbsp;Ruijia Guan,&nbsp;Lionel Peter Robert","doi":"10.1126/scirobotics.aed4569","DOIUrl":"10.1126/scirobotics.aed4569","url":null,"abstract":"<div >The validity of virtually represented robots in HRI experiments depends on when, where, and for whom it matters.</div>","PeriodicalId":56029,"journal":{"name":"Science Robotics","volume":"11 114","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":27.5,"publicationDate":"2026-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148044831","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A minimally invasive robotic spinal surgical system for anterior lumbar nerve decompression","authors":"Qingxiang Zhao,&nbsp;Xiandi Wang,&nbsp;Xin Zhong,&nbsp;Runfeng Zhu,&nbsp;Peizhi Zhou,&nbsp;Dan Pu,&nbsp;Baitao Lin,&nbsp;Tao Li,&nbsp;Shiyuan Sui,&nbsp;Haonan Zhou,&nbsp;Yuxi Cheng,&nbsp;Hao Zheng,&nbsp;Henry K. Chu,&nbsp;Jiancheng Zeng,&nbsp;Kang Li","doi":"10.1126/scirobotics.adu0590","DOIUrl":"10.1126/scirobotics.adu0590","url":null,"abstract":"<div >Lumbar degenerative diseases, primarily caused by pathological tissues compressing spinal nerves, typically necessitate surgical intervention—specifically lumbar nerve decompression—to alleviate pain. Although the anterior decompression approach demonstrates notable advantages, such as reduced bleeding and shorter postoperative hospitalization stays, compared with the conventional posterior approach, patients may still experience incomplete decompression because of various instrumental shortcomings, including restricted visibility and insufficiency of distal dexterity. In this study, we present a robotic surgical system for minimally invasive anterior lumbar nerve decompression, which comprises three slender robotic arms (2 millimeters in outer diameter) with high dexterity (18 degrees of freedom), facilitating effective navigation through the narrow intervertebral disc space to reach the posterior area. Each robot arm is based on concentric push-pull robot structure, forming three robotized instruments: an endoscope for visualization, a laser optical fiber for hemostasis and resection, and a gripper for tissue manipulation. These components are integrated through the hollow lumen of a slender trocar, and multi-instrument coordination enables effective decompression procedure with wide view. System performance was first validated using a three-dimensional–printed vertebral phantom model to confirm accessibility to bilateral articular processes. Subsequently, in vivo animal experiment and human cadaver tests were conducted to further demonstrate the full capabilities in performing minimally invasive lumbar nerve decompression. This study demonstrates the potential of the robotic system to facilitate surgical procedures in narrow, confined, and tortuous anatomical spaces, addressing the key limitations of conventional instruments in anterior lumbar nerve decompression.</div>","PeriodicalId":56029,"journal":{"name":"Science Robotics","volume":"11 114","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":27.5,"publicationDate":"2026-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148044874","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“Humanoids will soon replace most human workers”: A debate","authors":"Hesheng Wang,&nbsp;Michael Wang,&nbsp;Frank Park,&nbsp;Lijun Han,&nbsp;Huichan Zhao,&nbsp;XingXing Wang,&nbsp;Andra Keay,&nbsp;Shigeki Sugano,&nbsp;Yi Guo,&nbsp;Tamim Asfour,&nbsp;Yu Sun,&nbsp;Ken Goldberg","doi":"10.1126/scirobotics.aeh6422","DOIUrl":"10.1126/scirobotics.aeh6422","url":null,"abstract":"<div >At the 2025 International Conference of Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) in Zhejiang, China, leading researchers and industry experts debated whether humanoid robots will soon replace human workers. A summary of the points raised by the debaters for or against the claim is highlighted below.</div>","PeriodicalId":56029,"journal":{"name":"Science Robotics","volume":"11 114","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":27.5,"publicationDate":"2026-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147984542","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Cross-link collective: Entangled robotic matter with cohesive motion","authors":"Danna Ma,&nbsp;Baxi Chong,&nbsp;Daniel I. Goldman,&nbsp;Kirstin H. Petersen","doi":"10.1126/scirobotics.aec6393","DOIUrl":"10.1126/scirobotics.aec6393","url":null,"abstract":"<div >Robotic applications increasingly demand systems that are resilient, adaptable, and scalable. One promising route is through collectives of simple modules, where complex group-level behavior emerges from local interactions. By omitting fixed topologies and tight coordination, this approach sacrifices predictability and conventional tools for behaviors inherently optimized through stochastic mechanical interactions. A key challenge is maintaining cohesion and functionality without fixed connections and explicit coordination. We introduce the cross-link collective, a physically entangled robotic system inspired by cross-linking in active gels. Through shape morphing and transient entanglement, individually immobile modules produce sustained collective motion. The mechanically intelligent robot matter favors chains and phase relationships that reduce joint torques and reconfigures in response to perturbations. We show that distributed control can be added to this substrate to further enhance cohesion. Leveraging weak, reversible connections, the cross-link collective is adaptable, scalable, and fault tolerant, offering insights to applications from soft matter and robotics.</div>","PeriodicalId":56029,"journal":{"name":"Science Robotics","volume":"11 114","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":27.5,"publicationDate":"2026-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147984496","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Acceptance of humanoid robots: A psychological perspective","authors":"Stefano Puntoni","doi":"10.1126/scirobotics.aei1219","DOIUrl":"10.1126/scirobotics.aei1219","url":null,"abstract":"<div >Acceptance of robots depends on whether they support consumers’ psychological needs, making demand-side insights essential.</div>","PeriodicalId":56029,"journal":{"name":"Science Robotics","volume":"11 114","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":27.5,"publicationDate":"2026-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147984521","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Shape-morphing metamaterials with continuous relearning","authors":"Melisa Yashinski","doi":"10.1126/scirobotics.aei8549","DOIUrl":"10.1126/scirobotics.aei8549","url":null,"abstract":"<div >A metamaterial chain uses a physical learning framework to learn, forget, and relearn different shape changes.</div>","PeriodicalId":56029,"journal":{"name":"Science Robotics","volume":"11 114","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":27.5,"publicationDate":"2026-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147984644","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}