Lifeboat Foundation

Soft sensing technologies have the potential to revolutionize wearable devices, haptic interfaces, and robotic systems. However, most soft sensing technologies aren’t durable and consume high amounts of energy.

Now, researchers at the University of Cambridge have developed self-healing, biodegradable, 3D-printed materials that could be used in the development of realistic artificial hands and other soft robotics applications. The low-cost jelly-like materials can sense strain, temperature, and humidity. And unlike earlier self-healing robots, they can also partially repair themselves at room temperature.

“Incorporating soft sensors into robotics allows us to get a lot more information from them, like how strain on our muscles allows our brains to get information about the state of our bodies,” said David Hardman from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering the paper’s first author.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=GM3GM299orc

The photos look like a scene out of science fiction: Robot dogs patrolling the US-Mexico border, climbing over harsh terrain to search for threats and contraband.

But these images are real.

Continue reading “Robot dogs could patrol the US-Mexico border” »

The Google-backed AI firm taught a reinforcement learning algorithm to control the fiery plasma inside a tokamak nuclear fusion reactor.

But thankfully it did NOT involve 6 malevolent AI robot arms, NOR was it done in the middle of New York City by an oddly literally named Doctor Octavious. ☝️😉

Google’s DeepMind can dynamically adjust the magnetic fields inside a tokamak.

Researchers have developed self-healing, biodegradable, 3D-printed materials that could be used in the development of realistic artificial hands and other soft robotics applications.

The low-cost jelly-like materials, developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge, can sense strain, temperature and humidity. And unlike earlier self-healing robots, they can also partially repair themselves at room temperature.

The results are reported in the journal NPG Asia Materials.

DPS Group and Aizon discuss how artificial intelligence is enabling adaptive modeling in process development and integrating activities in biomanufacturing.

The Martian rover has done the most!

NASA’s Perseverance rover has been on Mars for a full Earth year. During that time, the little robot has gotten pretty familiar with Mars’ terrain and set off a historic mission to find out if life ever existed on the Red Planet.

Continue reading “6 major breakthroughs Perseverance made during its first year on Mars” »

In recent years, scientists have introduced a wide variety of robots of all shapes and sizes. Among these are microswimmers, carefully engineered microstructures that can move in water and other liquids.

Microswimmers could have numerous interesting applications, for instance allowing doctors to deliver drugs to targeted regions inside the human body, or scientists to introduce specific substances in water-based environments. While some of these robotic systems achieved remarkable results, most of them were found to be unable to efficiently move inside the human body.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) have recently developed new light-driven microswimmers that could be more suited for navigating within biological systems, including body fluids. These microswimmers, introduced in a paper published in Science Robotics, are simple microparticles based on the two-dimensional (2D) carbon nitride poly(heptazine imide) or PHI.

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Dave Meir.

Toyota heading to moon with cruiser, robotic arms, dreams.

Ns… See more.