Nanobots

Nanobots

New shapeshifting medical microbots inspired by germs
Nanobots have been a hot topic within the miniaturization trend for a long time. Developments in the medical robotics field ranging from tiny experimental robots that can swim through the bloodstream to origami-like creations designed to be swallowed. But one of the more troublesome problems is figuring out how to control microbots once they’re released. That’s where Selman Sakar, Hen-Wei Huang and Bradley Nelson come in. These researchers have invented a new type of microbot that might be the beginning of a revolution in how we deliver medication to the body.
A BIO-HYBRID STINGRAY ROBOT POWERED BY RAT MUSCLE

A BIO-HYBRID STINGRAY ROBOT POWERED BY RAT MUSCLE

LIGHT-STIMULATED ROBOT GLIDES LIKE THE REAL THING

Nature-inspired robotics is a hot field these days. We've reported on robots designed to mimic cockroaches, salamanders,cheetahs, sea snakes, among others. Basically, if it's alive, somebody out there is trying to make a robot version. So a robot inspired by a stingray might sound like more of the same. Not so. 

This tiny swimming robot, created by researchers at Harvard University's Department of Bioengineering and Applied Sciences, is powered by rat muscle cells, making it a biohybrid machine--part robot, part biological tissue. Previous "bio-bot" projects have used biological actuators to produce movement. But the biorobotic stingray, developed by an international and interdisciplinary team of scientists, has pushed the field forward with a complex propulsion mechanism triggered by light, which allows the bio-bot to be steered around obstacles. And that's just the beginning of what makes this robo-stingray special.
"Really what we're doing is using tools from robotics to understand the heart," Harvard professor Kit Parker told Popular Science. Parker is a cardiac physiologist, and he's the guy who dreamed up this ambitious project. In the long term, his goal is to use the technology behind the robotic stingray to construct an entire human heart for kids with heart disease.
Image courtesy of Karaghen Hudson
A tissue-engineered soft-robotic ray (left) and a little skate, Leucoraja erinacea (right).
Parker's moment of inspiration struck at the New England Aquarium, when his daughter reached out to pet a ray, and it swam away. He went straight to a postdoctoral fellow in his Disease Biophysics Group, named Sung-Jin Park, and told him his plan. "I said: we're going to build a ray, we're going to build it out of a rat, and we're going to make it light-guided," Parker says. "The look on his face was both horror and sorrow; horror that I thought this could work, and sorrow that he'd bet his whole career on me as a mentor."
It took him a year, but he eventually convinced Park to do it. "He's my dream maker," Parker says.
Stingrays swim with a technique much admired by scientists and engineers alike. A few years back, we wrote about how the stingray's movement was analyzed for the purpose of designing a better submersible. The secret to their swimming talent is their flat, round shape, the undulating movement of their pectoral fins, and a force they generate called the "leading-edge vortex," the same force that gives birds their thrust.
"I said: we're going to build a ray, we're going to build it out of a rat, and we're going to make it light-guided."
In order to emulate this complex motion, Parker's interdisciplinary team had to bring together an array of technologies and materials. Or as Parker puts it, "It's made from a pinch of rat, a pinch of breast implant, and a pinch of gold."
And he's not kidding.
They started the construction of the robo-ray's body with a layer of transparent elastic polymer--the aforementioned "breast implant." Then they genetically encoded rat heart cells to respond to flashes of blue light, and aligned the cells along the ray's "fins" in a serpentine pattern. These muscles would allow the fins to flex downward, but to ensure they would return to the starting position, the team reverse-engineered a stingray's physiology to create a skeleton made of gold. Because, Parker says, "Cells like gold, just like people do." A final layer of polymer, and the biohybrid stingray was complete. At just 16 millimeters long, and weighing just ten grams, the tiny robot looked a little like a transparent coin with a tail.
They placed the tiny bio-bot into a saline solution filled with sugar to feed the rat cells and zapped it with pulses of blue light. The rat muscles contracted sequentially along the serpentine pattern, causing a ripple effect mimicking the swimming motion of a live stingray. And most importantly, it propelled the robot forward. By hitting it with asymmetric pulses, the researchers were able to steer it around obstacles.
Parker credits Sung-Jin Park with the bulk of the work on the project, and for going along with his crazy idea. "I'm getting a lot of mileage out of saying 'I told you so.'"
The biggest advance, as Parker sees it, is that the cells in the robo-ray act as both the actuator and the sensor, a big step toward his goal to build an entire heart. But others who worked on the project may see it differently, he says, and that's the beauty of this kind of transdisciplinary science.
"If you have four people looking at a piece of art, they each come up with a different interpretation of it. It's the same way with this science," he says. "The cardiac biologist sees the implications for how the heart's built; the marine biologist sees the implications for how the stingray moves; and the robotics engineer sees the way you can use cells as a building material."
And the rest of us may just see an incredible, even beautiful, emulation of nature. A little rat, a touch of breast implant, a sprinkle of gold--somehow it all adds up to bio-robotic magic.

Transparent Resistive RAM

Transparent Resistive RAM

A group of scientists at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) has fabricated a working computer chip that is almost completely clear, the first of its kind. The new technology, called transparent resistive random access memory (TRRAM).
Vibrating Insoles could increase sensitivity and improve balance.

Vibrating Insoles could increase sensitivity and improve balance.

Insoles That Buzz Your Feet Could Improve Balance

Study participants undergoing strenuous activity while wearing such insoles adjusted their strides in a way that typically improves balance, the research found. The study was published online in the May 2016 issue of the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.
The insoles work using a process called "stochastic resonance" (SR), a method for amplifying a weak signal by adding "white noise" across a spectrum of frequencies. The vibrations produced by the insoles may be imperceptible, but they provide a type of signal upgrade to the sensitivity of the user's sole, which translates into enhanced performance while walking.
Earlier studies explored how this technique might be used to improve balance in elderly people. It's not surprising that such studies took place, said Daniel Miranda, the lead author of the new study and a Technology Development Fellow at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University in Massachusetts.
"Somebody who's 65 or 70 [years old] who's generally healthy may have some sensory deficits due to the natural aging process," Miranda told Live Science. It made sense that studies would investigate how this technology could help older people with decreased sensitivity recover some of what they had lost.
But, Miranda and his colleagues wondered, might there also be applications for young people?
In the years since the first experiments with this technique, the technology had progressed so that the actuators and sensors could be installed inside a thin, flexible insole made of traditional insole materials, which could fit comfortably inside a shoe. This meant the effects of SR could be tested during more dynamic activities than before, the researchers in the new study said.
The scientists examined subjects walking up an incline on a treadmill, and applied SR vibration through the insoles at different times during the task: before the people reached their maximum effort, during the peak of exertion and after they admitted fatigue. This was done to see what effect the stimulation might have on the participants' performance.
This video obtained in the Wyss Motion Capture Lab shows a study participant's movement, captured using motion-sensing technology. Wearing the insoles helped participants keep their balance and maintain walking stability when fatigued.
This video obtained in the Wyss Motion Capture Lab shows a study participant's movement, captured using motion-sensing technology. Wearing the insoles helped participants keep their balance and maintain walking stability when fatigued.
Since the pulses were too gentle to feel, walkers wearing the insoles had no way of knowing when they were receiving the vibrations, allowing the scientists to be certain that subjects were not consciously changing the way they walked.

The researchers found that whenever they activated the insoles, there was a 10 percent improvement in a gait mechanism called step-width variability, which is related to balance. Varying step width, Miranda explained, improves stability while walking.

Using the insoles to increase sensation for a more stable gait could be especially beneficial when fatigue reduces normal sensitivity to stimuli — for both recreational and professional athletes, he said.

And better balance, Miranda added, could keep people from getting hurt.

"Improving the balance-control mechanism has the potential to translate to reducing injury or risk of injury, but those studies still need to be done," he said.

This Pair of Bionic Pants Is a Chair That You Wear


The Chairless Chair


If you’ve been looking for the perfect opportunity to freak out your co-workers, look no further than the new Chairless Chair that makes it look like you’re sitting on thin air. Created by Zurich-based startup noonee, the Chairless Chair is essentially a pair of bionic pants you can wear all the time, lock in place and lean on when you need the support. The pants use a hip harness that directs your weight onto the heels of your shoes when locked, but lets you move freely and even run while wearing them when unlocked. Simply move into your desired position and power on the device to lock using a single six-volt battery that can last up to 24 hours.
“The idea came from wanting to sit anywhere and everywhere, and from working in a UK packaging factory when I was 17,” 29-year-old noonee CEO and co-founder, Keith Gunura told CNN. “Standing for hours on end causes a lot of distress on the lower limbs, but most workers get very few breaks and chairs are rarely provided because they take up too much space. So I thought that the best idea was to strap an unobtrusive chair directly to myself.”

“In addition to resting your leg muscles, it also provides optimal posture,” noonee CTO and co-founder Bryan Anastisiades told CNN. “It keeps your back straight and can reduce the occurrence of bad posters [sic] for both healthy workers and those recovering from muscle related injuries.”
Sitting all day is really bad for you but standing for long periods is also not great, so the Chairless Chair is a welcome solution to this problem. Production line trials of the product are set to start in Germany with BMW in September and also with Audi later in 2014.
Source: +noonee