Humans have always wondered how water beads roll off flowers, as well off caterpillars and some other insects, and how insects like water striders are able to walk on water. It’s a property called super hydrophobia. Self-cleaning counter tops, fabrics, walls, even micro-robots that can walk on water – all those things and more could… »
Cecilia Laschi, of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa, and her colleagues are attempting to build a robot with arms that work in the same way that octopuses’ tentacles do. Having no solid skeleton, it will be the world’s first entirely soft robot. Their goal is to use the knowledge related to the principles that give… »
Folks from German company Festo keep creating bionic marine animals which float in air. Penguins are fascinating creatures which have lost their ability to fly in the course of their genetic development as marine birds, but Festo engineers managed to create an artificial penguin and taught it “autonomous flight in the sea of air”. Named… »
The Stenzel Ltd. from Poland is a unique commercial-scientific venture in the Central Europe area. They are developing HeXoR, a mobile didactic robot which has been designed as a teaching aid for schools and research institutions. It can be lots of fun if you are an enthusiast, who is keen on robotics, informatics and electronics… »
Besides being cute, penguins are amazingly good swimmers. In their search for food, penguins often travel more than a hundred kilometers per day; they are able to dive in depths up to 700 meters. They are fast n the water, have a great deal of endurance and are astoundingly agile and can reach a top… »
Remember “Star Wars” and Luke’s artificial hand? Our reality isn’t too far away because Scottish company called Touch Bionics developed a “bionic hand” for amputees, called the i-LIMB. i-LIMB is one of the most sophisticated prosthetic hand commercially available, as it lets the wearer assume different grips by sensing electrical impulses in the muscles in… »
Canadian filmmaker Rob Spence damaged his right eye as a 13-year-old while playing with his grandfather’s gun, and eventually had surgery to wear a non-functional prosthetic eye. Engineer Kosta Grammatis has succeeded in placing a working red LED in Spence’s eye giving him a look similar to the star cyborg in The Terminator. It is… »
