Through its Tactical Technology Office (TTO), DARPA wants to move drones to the next level with its Lift Challenge – a US$6.5-million competition aimed at creating small drones capable of lifting ...

The Pentagon’s secretive technology incubator has launched its latest X-plane competition, this time with an eye toward identifying concepts for a highly efficient uncrewed cargo drone. The US Defense ...

Olympic barbell weights will be used as the drone’s payload for the DARPA Lift Challenge flyoff competition in mid-2026. Credit: DARPA Pentagon neglect played a key role in China gaining global ...

The X-65 aircraft, which Aurora Flight Sciences is building for DARPA as part of the CRANE program, will use short air bursts to steer instead of traditional flaps and rudders. But rising costs, ...

Memo may not be the world’s fastest barista, but it is impressive—for a robot. I recently watched as Memo, a new home robot from a company called Sunday Robotics, made coffee in an open-plan kitchen ...

DARPA's Lift Challenge aims to develop small uncrewed aircraft systems (drones) capable of carrying up to four times their own weight, a substantial leap from the typical 1:1 payload-to-weight ratio.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few ...

A modified Boston Dynamics Spot robot operates in an experimental mine in Colorado in preparation for the DARPA Subterranean Challenge. (Photo: Michelle Wiese) CU Boulder College of Engineering and ...

XPeng held a special event at its headquarters in Guangzhou, China, this week, showcasing its transformation from an electric vehicle maker to something much more ambitious involving humanoid robots, ...

To continue reading this content, please enable JavaScript in your browser settings and refresh this page. Preview this article 1 min Although a full headcount was ...

As military missions become more complicated, warfighters need more capable drones to use across diverse scenarios. The same also applies to civilian applications, like infrastructure inspection, ...