Georgia Institute of Technology Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines

Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology director Gil Weinberg and Ph.D candidate Richard Savery were awarded a new grant totalling $669,912 from the National Science Foundation. The purpose of the grant is to research trust and emotions between robots and humans by way of non-verbal communication.

To walk or run with finesse, roaches and robots coordinate leg movements via signals sent through centralized systems -- but utterly divergent ones. Despite their seemingly unbridgeable differences, researchers have devised handy principles and equations from studying roaches to assess how both beasts and bots locomote and to improve robotic gait.

The team placed first in the design competition and tied for third overall.