New robotic control software avoids jamming their joints

Switching from one smartphone to another is mostly a smooth procedure. You log into your accounts and your apps, preferences, and contacts should sync to the new hardware. But in the world of robotics, swapping an old robotic arm for a newer model has meant setting everything up from scratch. To fix that, a team of researchers at the Swiss École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) has developed what they call Kinematic Intelligence, a framework that makes switching robots work more like …