A group of researchers at the University of Tokyo attached a male silkmoth to a free-moving polystyrene ball that can control the movement of a small, two-wheeled robot. According to researchers, the findings will be used to devise better smell tracking algorithms by providing useful suggestions for the application of an insect behavioral model to… »
Our life experience has taught us that materials around us melt or turn into vapor when we heat them, but a group of chemists at Radboud University Nijmegen managed to create a super gel which stiffens when it is warmed. Once it is cooled bellow the projected threshold, the gel melts back into the liquid… »
Bionics represents the application of biological methods and systems found in nature to the study and design of engineering systems and modern technology. In some cases it is also referred as biomimicry, biomimetics, bio-inspiration, biognosis, and it is close to bionical creativity engineering. Ranging from biomedicine, surgical robots, exoskeletons and artificial tissue, to robots, vehicles,… »
A team consisting out of researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California, Berkeley, has discovered a method to create artificial materials with desired properties by controlling the assembly of these complex structures. To achieve this effect, the researchers used bacteriophage as the building block which mimicked the ability of natural tissues… »
In our article about solar power, we already wrote about concentrated solar power (CSP) power plants. In order to function, these plants need a lot of space and sunlight, and researchers at MIT collaborated with RWTH Aachen University in Germany to come up with a design that increases the amount of sunlight its mirrors collect,… »
Engineers at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (VirginiaTech) have used inspiration from nature and developed a robot whose design and motion patterns resemble moon jellyfish (Aurelia aurita). Named Robotjelly, the robot was developed for the U.S. Office of Naval Research back in 2009, and its latest improved iteration was presented at the 2011 meeting… »
Remaining stable while going over obstacles is fairly tricky for small robots, so the researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, fixed a small robot dubbed DASH (Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod) with lateral and tail wings borrowed from a store-bought toy to see if that would help. Although the wings haven’t enabled the robot to… »
Researchers at Delft University of Technology and the University of Basel have created a biomimetic nanopore that provides a unique test and measurement platform for the way that proteins move into a cell’s nucleus. The biomimetic pore is fully functional and able to act selective, thus it can be used as a testing platform for… »
