Fan-freakin’-tastic. It wasn’t enough that drones are already watching our every move and capable of raining down missile-locked death strikes. No, we had to give them the ability to swoop and snag items like a goddamn Golden Eagle taking a baby. Everybody duck. More »
We have robots that can swarm on land and in the air and now they have invaded swimming pools. These robotic boats from the University of Pennsylvania are pretty neat and kind of cute too. Each boat is named after periodic table elements. And they won’t try to drown us either – not for a while at least.
For this DARPA-sponsored project, engineers are trying to get this fleet of small robotic boats to cooperate to form useful structures that can withstand the movements of water, while being able to stiffen as needed to handle vehicular or other traffic. The university has over 100 of these prototype floating robots. They are each controlled by a tiny Gumstix Linux computer use four separate motors to enable omnidirectional movement and zero-radius turns.
This is useful for more than just playing in the pool. A swarm of these robo-boats could form bridges, runways, or even islands. Imagine what larger versions could do for rescuing people at sea or forming impromptu bridges so that people could evacuate during a terrible storm. They could even help to create an impromptu runway for delivery of supplies and transport of personnel.
You can see the robots in action in the video clip below:
[via The Daily Pennsylvanian via iEEE Spectrum]
Alt-week peels back the covers on some of the more curious sci-tech stories from the last seven days.
There’s definitely more than a touch of a biological theme to proceedings this week. In fact, so much so that we thought we might well end up with enough ingredients to make our own cyborg. Or rather, a light-responding canine cyborg with a really cool voice. Yep, science and technology is working hard to make all of these things possible — albeit independently. If science ever does do the right thing, and pool its resources on such a project, you can thanks us for the tip off. This is Alt-week.
Continue reading Alt-week 9.1.12: growing bones, repairing voices, and a pair of satellites
Filed under: Misc, Science, Internet, Alt
Alt-week 9.1.12: growing bones, repairing voices, and a pair of satellites originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 01 Sep 2012 17:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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By far the greatest challenge for robots with legs is staying upright when the going gets rough. A team at the University of Pennsylvania’s Kod*lab has a hunch that we don’t need extra smarts to make that happen — just an extra appendage. The upgraded X-RHex Lite (XRL) carries a tail that will swing in the right direction to keep the robot upright if it’s caught out by a fall, much like a cat. That’s impressive for a nearly 18-pound robot (the previous Tailbot was 0.4 pounds), but we’re pretty sure no feline has six springy legs; the XRL can crash to the ground and still get back up like it ain’t no thing, which gives it a fudge factor others don’t have. We don’t know if the hexapod critter will lead to more than further experiments. If there are fewer stuck rovers on future exploration missions, though, we’ll know who to thank.
Continue reading X-RHex Lite robot grows a tail, always lands on its feet (video)
X-RHex Lite robot grows a tail, always lands on its feet (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Jul 2012 22:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Printing a chocolate heart is easy enough, but how about an actual organ? There are folks working on it, but it turns out those veins of yours aren’t exactly a breeze to replicate. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and MIT may have found a semi-sweet solution — dissolving a sugar lattice in a batch of living Jell-O. The research team uses a RepRap 3D printer and a custom extruder head to print a filament network composed of sucrose, glucose and dextran which is later encased in a bio-gel containing living cells. Once the confectionery paths are dissolved, they leave a network of artery-like channels in their void. Tissue living in the gel can then receive oxygen and nutrients through the hollow pipes.
The research has been promising so far, and has increased the number of functional liver cells the team has been able to maintain in artificial tissues. These results suggest the technique could have future research possibilities in developing lab-grown organs. MIT Professor Sangeeta Bhatia, who helped conduct the effort, hopes to push the group’s work further. “More work will be needed to learn how to directly connect these types of vascular networks to natural blood vessels while at the same time investigating fundamental interactions between the liver cells and the patterned vasculature. It’s an exciting future ahead.” Scientists at other labs could also get their mitts on the sweet templates since they’re stable enough to endure shipping. Head past the break for a video of the innard infrastructure.
Researchers use 3D printer, sugar, to create a fake artery network for lab-grown tissue originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 03 Jul 2012 04:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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