Recycling robot can sort paper and plastic by touch

It can be a pain for workers to sort recycling, both because of the safety and the sheer monotony of it. But how do you get robots to do the job when they can't always tell the difference between a can and a cardboard tube? For MIT CSAIL, it's simple...

Material with eagle-like grasp could lead to grippier robot hands

Most materials bulge out when you squeeze them, pushing the energy outside. But that's not always what you want -- wouldn't it sometimes be better for them to collapse and hold the energy inside? These exotic materials (known as auxetics) already e...