research
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Tiny Robot Grippers Dissolve Away In Your Body Once Their Job Is Done
As robots get small enough to easily swim around inside the human body, they will soon be used to perform medical procedures all from within a patient. And researchers at Johns Hopkins University are making such an idea even more plausible with the development of tiny robotic grippers that will actually dissolve away inside a…
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Colour-Changing Rubber Sheets Show Areas Of Extreme Stress When Stretched
Researchers at Japan’s National Institute for Materials Science — or NIMS for short — have taken some inspiration from insects like beetles and butterflies to create a stretchable rubber-like material that changes colour under stress. As the material is stretched, it moves through a spectrum of shimmering colours that can be used to visually identify…
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Even Our Balloon Animals Will Soon Be Made By Robots
DARPA’s ATLAS is an impressive feat of robotics engineering, but despite representing the bleeding edge of automatons, it’s slow and clumsy when it comes to doing anything on its own. A better way to make a robot as skilled as a human is to simply put a human in complete control of it, manipulating it…
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Inflatable Stickies Make Building Robots As Easy As Arts And Crafts
In recent years, taking a simpler approach to science and engineering has paid off handsomely in certain fields. It’s part of the reason there are now rovers exploring Mars, and many feel it will be the easiest way to make robots more commonplace. After all, what could be a simpler way to build an automaton…