Smallest walking robot makes microscale measurements

Researchers have created the smallest walking robot yet. Its mission: to be tiny enough to interact with waves of visible light and still move independently, so that it can maneuver to specific locations — in a tissue sample, for instance — to take images and measure forces at the scale of some of the body’s …

Inside the ‘swat team’ — how insects react to virtual reality gaming

Humans get a real buzz from the virtual world of gaming and augmented reality but now scientists have trialled the use of these new-age technologies on small animals, to test the reactions of tiny hoverflies and even crabs. In a bid to comprehend the aerodynamic powers of flying insects and other little-understood animal behaviors, the …

OpenAI faces critical test as Chinese models close the gap in AI leadership

In the fast-moving world of AI, competition is heating up—and nowhere is this more evident than in the battle over advanced reasoning models. In just the past few days, three new AI models from Chinese developers—Deepseek R1 (HighFlyer Capital Management), Marco-1 (Alibaba), and OpenMMLab’s hybrid model —have entered the fray, challenging OpenAI’s o1 Preview in …