Robot walks on water
Water striders, insects that walk on the surface of the water, may never set foot on land in their lives, and yet they’re not swimmers. Over the past million or so years, this insect—sometimes called a water skater—has ...
Technology news
Elastic circuit connectors designed for rubber-band-like circuits
Researchers from Belgium have devised a plan for making headway into the area of flexible, washable electronics. These integrated electronics, which could be incorporated into clothing and biomedical applications, require ...
Jumping robots take clues from nature
A group of mechanical engineers from the University of Bath has a peculiar interest in flying squirrels, fleas, and grasshoppers. Inspired by animals considered to be excellent jumpers, the researchers have designed two jumping ...
Tactile sensor acts as a human finger in minimally invasive surgery
Researchers have designed a millimeter-sized sensor that has many of the tactile abilities of a human finger: it can sense the magnitude and the position of an applied force, slippage of a grasping tool, and the softness ...
Simplicity may be key to robotic self-reproduction
“Self-reproduction is one of the remarkable feats of biological systems which has remained largely outside the scope of capabilities of traditional engineered systems,” explains Victor Zykov and his colleagues from Cornell ...
40% efficient solar cells to be used for solar electricity
Scientists from Spectrolab, Inc., a subsidiary of Boeing, have recently published their research on the fabrication of solar cells that surpass the 40% efficiency milestone—the highest efficiency achieved for any photovoltaic ...
To prevent accidents, car must know its driver
Over the past several years, scientists working in the area of intelligent vehicles have developed predictive braking systems to help prevent rear-end collisions. When your car gets dangerously close to the car in front of ...
Superconducting motor to increase power density
The field of electric motors has recently entered a new era. The electric motors that you see today in everything from washing machines, toys, and fans use the same basic principles as motors from 50 years ago. But with the ...
Microorganisms act as tiny machines in future MEMS devices
The single-celled Spirostomum is a tiny brown worm that can contract its 500-micrometer-long body to 25% of its length in a millisecond, making this protozoan the fastest-contracting microorganism known. Scientists think ...
Browse digital media by flipping through a book
As the amount of information on the Internet, TV and radio continues to increase, one of the challenges users face is how to quickly find what they're looking for. As Jun-ichiro Watanabe of Hitachi Ltd. researched this question, ...
