Lifeboat Foundation

From there, they ran flight tests using a specially designed motion-tracking system. Each electroluminescent actuator served as an active marker that could be tracked using iPhone cameras. The cameras detect each light color, and a computer program they developed tracks the position and attitude of the robots to within 2 millimeters of state-of-the-art infrared motion capture systems.

“We are very proud of how good the tracking result is, compared to the state-of-the-art. We were using cheap hardware, compared to the tens of thousands of dollars these large motion-tracking systems cost, and the tracking results were very close,” Kevin Chen says.

In the future, they plan to enhance that motion tracking system so it can track robots in real-time. The team is working to incorporate control signals so the robots could turn their light on and off during flight and communicate more like real fireflies. They are also studying how electroluminescence could even improve some properties of these soft artificial muscles, Kevin Chen says.

Scientists at the Institute of Applied Physics at TU Dresden have come a step closer to the vision of a broad application of flexible, printable electronics. The team around Dr. Hans Kleemann has succeeded for the first time in developing powerful vertical organic transistors with two independent control electrodes. The results have recently been published in the renowned online journal Nature Communications.

High-definition roll-up televisions or foldable smartphones may soon no longer be unaffordable luxury goods that can be admired at international electronics trade fairs. High-performance organic transistors are a key necessity for the mechanically flexible electronic circuits required for these applications. However, conventional horizontal organic thin-film transistors are very slow due to the hopping-transport in organic semiconductors, so they cannot be used for applications requiring high frequencies. Especially for logic circuits with low power consumption, such as those used for Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), it is mandatory to develop transistors enabling high operation frequency as well as adjustable device characteristics (i.e., threshold-voltage). The research group Organic Devices and Systems (ODS) at the Dresden Integrated Center for Applied Photophysics (IAPP) of the Institute of Applied Physics headed by Dr.

James Vary has been waiting for nuclear physics experiments to confirm the reality of a “tetraneutron” that he and his colleagues theorized, predicted and first announced during a presentation in the summer of 2014, followed by a research paper in the fall of 2016.

“Whenever we present a theory, we always have to say we’re waiting for experimental confirmation,” said Vary, an Iowa State University professor of physics and astronomy.

In the case of four neutrons (very, very) briefly bound together in a temporary quantum state or resonance, that day for Vary and an international team of theorists is now here.

Inspired by your liver and activated by light, a chemical process developed in labs at Rice University and in China shows promise for drug design and the development of unique materials.

Researchers led by Rice chemist Julian West and Xi-Sheng Wang at the University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, are reporting their successful catalytic process to simultaneously add two distinct functional groups to single alkenes, organic molecules drawn from petrochemicals that contain at least one carbon-carbon double bond combined with hydrogen atoms.

Better yet, they say, is that these alkenes are “unactivated”—that is, they lack reactive atoms near the double bond—and until now, have proven challenging to enhance.

Microplastics are found nearly everywhere on Earth and can be harmful to animals if they’re ingested. But it’s hard to remove such tiny particles from the environment, especially once they settle into nooks and crannies at the bottom of waterways. Now, researchers in ACS’ Nano Letters have created a light-activated fish robot that “swims” around quickly, picking up and removing microplastics from the environment.

Because microplastics can fall into cracks and crevices, they’ve been hard to remove from aquatic environments. One solution that’s been proposed is using small, flexible and self-propelled robots to reach these pollutants and clean them up. But the traditional materials used for soft robots are hydrogels and elastomers, and they can be damaged easily in aquatic environments. Another material called mother-of-pearl, also known as nacre, is strong and flexible, and is found on the inside surface of clam shells. Nacre layers have a microscopic gradient, going from one side with lots of calcium carbonate mineral-polymer composites to the other side with mostly a silk protein filler. Inspired by this natural substance, Xinxing Zhang and colleagues wanted to try a similar type of gradient structure to create a durable and bendable material for soft robots.

The researchers linked β-cyclodextrin molecules to sulfonated graphene, creating composite nanosheets. Then solutions of the nanosheets were incorporated with different concentrations into polyurethane latex mixtures. A layer-by-layer assembly method created an ordered concentration gradient of the nanocomposites through the material from which the team formed a tiny fish robot that was 15-mm (about half-an-inch) long. Rapidly turning a near-infrared light laser on and off at a fish’s tail caused it to flap, propelling the robot forward. The robot could move 2.67 body lengths per second—a speed that’s faster than previously reported for other soft swimming robots and that is about the same speed as active phytoplankton moving in water. The researchers showed that the swimming fish robot could repeatedly adsorb nearby polystyrene microplastics and transport them elsewhere. The material could also heal itself after being cut, still maintaining its ability to adsorb microplastics.

By combining two distinct approaches into an integrated workflow, Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) researchers have developed a novel automated process for designing and fabricating customized soft robots. Their method, published in Advanced Materials Technologies, can be applied to other kinds of soft robots—allowing their mechanical properties to be tailored in an accessible manner.

Though robots are often depicted as stiff, metallic structures, an emerging class of pliable machines known as soft robots is rapidly gaining traction. Inspired by the flexible forms of living organisms, soft robots have wide applications in sensing, movement, object grasping and manipulation, among others. Yet, such robots are still mostly fabricated through manual casting techniques—limiting the complexity and geometries that can be achieved.

“Most fabrication approaches are predominantly manual due to a lack of standard tools,” said SUTD Assistant Professor Pablo Valdivia y Alvarado, who led the study. “But 3D printing or additive manufacturing is slowly coming into play as it facilitates repeatability and allows more complex designs—improving quality and performance.”

Flashes of what may become a transformative new technology are coursing through a network of optic fibers under Chicago.

Researchers have created one of the world’s largest networks for sharing quantum information —a field of science that depends on paradoxes so strange that Albert Einstein didn’t believe them.

The network, which connects the University of Chicago with Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, is a rudimentary version of what scientists hope someday to become the internet of the future. For now, it’s opened up to businesses and researchers to test fundamentals of quantum information sharing.

For a few years now, spent grain, the cereal residue from breweries, has been reused in animal feed. This material could also be used in nanotechnology. Professor Federico Rosei’s team at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) has shown that microbrewery waste can be used as a carbon source to synthesize quantum dots. The work, done in collaboration with Claudiane Ouellet-Plamondon of the École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS), was published in the Royal Society of Chemistry’s journal RSC Advances.

Often considered “artificial atoms,” quantum dots are used in the transmission of light. With a range of interesting physicochemical properties, this type of nanotechnology has been successfully used as a sensor in biomedicine or as LEDs in next generation displays. But there is a drawback. Current quantum dots are produced with heavy and toxic metals like cadmium. Carbon is an interesting alternative, both for its biocompatibility and its accessibility.

Australian scientists have taken the first step towards improved storage of human cells, which may lead to the safe storage of organs such as hearts and lungs.

The team’s discovery of new cryoprotective agents opens the door to many more being developed that could one day help to eliminate the need for organ transplant waiting lists. Their results are published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry B.

Cryopreservation is a process of cooling biological specimens down to very low temperatures so they can be stored for a long time. Storing cells through cryopreservation has had big benefits for the world—including boosting supplies at blood banks and assisting reproduction—but it is currently impossible to store organs and simple tissues.