Engineers and scientists at The University of Texas at Austin and the AMOLF institute in the Netherlands have invented the first mechanical metamaterials that easily transfer motion effortlessly in one direction while blocking ...
Optics & Photonics
Feb 13, 2017
5
2001
While eating takeout one day, University of Chicago scientists Bozhi Tian and Yin Fang started thinking about the noodles—specifically, their elasticity. A specialty of Xi'an, Tian's hometown in China, is wheat noodles ...
Materials Science
Feb 4, 2020
1
2318
Soft robots do a lot of things well but they're not exactly known for their speed. The artificial muscles that move soft robots, called actuators, tend to rely on hydraulics or pneumatics, which are slow to respond and difficult ...
Engineering
Jul 21, 2016
0
816
A future of soft robots that wash your dishes or smart T-shirts that power your cell phone may depend on the development of stretchy power sources. But traditional batteries are thick and rigid—not ideal properties for ...
General Physics
Aug 23, 2016
6
1468
In some circles, memristors (from "memory resistor," as coined by Leon Chua in a 1971 paper outlining memristive theory) are all the rage – and for good reason: As circuit elements which "remember" the amount of current ...
A health care robot that displays a patient's temperature and pulse, and even reacts to a patient's mood.
Robotics
Mar 4, 2016
4
182
Soft robotics has made leaps and bounds over the last decade as researchers around the world have experimented with different materials and designs to allow once rigid, jerky machines to bend and flex in ways that mimic and ...
Engineering
Nov 27, 2017
3
544
Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems invented a magnetically controlled soft robot only four millimeters in size, that can walk, crawl or roll through uneven terrain, carry cargo, climb onto the ...
Robotics
Jan 25, 2018
0
508
Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed the first soft robot that is capable of walking on rough surfaces, such as sand and pebbles. The 3D-printed, four-legged robot can climb over obstacles and ...
Robotics
May 16, 2017
4
128
Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a technique for using chains of magnetic nanoparticles to manipulate elastic polymers in three dimensions, which could be used to remotely control new "soft ...
Nanomaterials
Dec 18, 2015
0
887
