Inspired by the way plants grow, MIT researchers designed a flexible robot appendage that can work in tight spaces but is rigid enough to support heavy parts or twist tight screws. From MIT News:
The appendage design is inspired by the way plants grow, which involves the transport of nutrients, in a fluidized form, up to the plant’s tip. There, they are converted into solid material to produce, bit by bit, a supportive stem.
Likewise, the robot consists of a “growing point,” or gearbox, that pulls a loose chain of interlocking blocks into the box. Gears in the box then lock the chain units together and feed the chain out, unit by unit, as a rigid appendage...
“The realization of the robot is totally different from a real plant, but it exhibits the same kind of functionality, at a certain abstract level,” (mechanical engineer Harry) Asada says.
The critters at the Atlanta Botanical Garden look oddly … metallic? From the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Their newly developed SlothBot is built to study animals, plants and the overall environment below them by moving as little as possible. It inches along overhead cables only when necessary, charging itself with solar panels to […]
Built by researchers at Harvard and the University of Colorado, the Harvard Ambulatory MicroRobot (HAMR) is just 2.25 centimeters long. It “comes up to about knee-high on a cockroach,” writes Evan Ackerman in IEEE Spectrum, and can run like hell. Four piezoelectric-driven legs carry it around at 30 centimeters per second even carrying its own […]
Université de Sherbrooke engineers demonstrated a wearable robotic third arm that weighs about the same as a human arm. According to Evan Ackerman writing in IEEE Spectrum, waist-worn hydraulic limb “is gentle enough to pick fruit but powerful enough to punch through a wall.” From his interview with project lead Catherine Véronneau: IEEE Spectrum: Can […]
There was already enough concern about the healthy state of our drinking water before COVID-19. And while there’s no evidence that the coronavirus has ever been detected in the water supply, the general sense of fear surrounding any type of contamination is obviously at a fever pitch everywhere. Contaminants like lead, chromium, arsenic, copper, mercury, […]
Allergies are brutal, affecting about 30 percent of all American adults. While many only saddle sufferers with mild irritations like coughing, sneezing, a runny nose or watering eyes, some symptoms can be even more intrusive and significantly more painful. Sinus pressure is one of those unholy side effects, causing a pain that can stretch from […]
“I probably use my chef’s knives more than any other tool in the kitchen.” – Bobby Flay, celebrity chef Cooking at home has taken on a whole new life in the wake of COVID-19, and even with restaurants slowly reopening across the US, there’s heavy reason to suspect that more of us preparing more meals […]
