Self-organising origami robot unfolds itself… and walks - tech - 07 August 2014 - New Scientist

Self-organising origami robot unfolds itself… and walks - tech - 07 August 2014 - New Scientist

Harnessing the speed of light | MIT News Office

Harnessing the speed of light | MIT News Office: One of Fang’s key discoveries is finding how to beat the diffraction of light. Since light and sound waves tend to spread out when blocked by an obstacle, images and communication signals can become blurry and muddled. In his lab, Fang discovered that by breaking the diffraction barrier, light signals can be sent at 10 times greater capacity. This has allowed him to produce results on the sub-nanometer scale, with light as a machining tool providing “a new degree of precision,” he says.

Muscle-powered bio-bots walk on command | News Bureau | University of Illinois

Muscle-powered bio-bots walk on command | News Bureau | University of Illinois: The new bio-bots are powered by a strip of skeletal muscle cells that can be triggered by an electric pulse...

“Skeletal muscles cells are very attractive because you can pace them using external signals,” Bashir said. “For example, you would use skeletal muscle when designing a device that you wanted to start functioning when it senses a chemical or when it received a certain signal. To us, it’s part of a design toolbox. We want to have different options that could be used by engineers to design these things.”

The design is inspired by the muscle-tendon-bone complex found in nature. There is a backbone of 3-D printed hydrogel, strong enough to give the bio-bot structure but flexible enough to bend like a joint. Two posts serve to anchor a strip of muscle to the backbone, like tendons attach muscle to bone, but the posts also act as feet for the bio-bot.

New ultrastiff, ultralight material developed | MIT News Office

New ultrastiff, ultralight material developed | MIT News Office: The actual production of such materials is made possible by a high-precision 3-D printing process called projection microstereolithography...

“We found that for a material as light and sparse as aerogel [a kind of glass foam], we see a mechanical stiffness that’s comparable to that of solid rubber, and 400 times stronger than a counterpart of similar density. Such samples can easily withstand a load of more than 160,000 times their own weight,” says Fang...

How To 3-D Print Your Own Invisibility Cloak | Popular Science

How To 3-D Print Your Own Invisibility Cloak | Popular Science: Duke University engineer Yaroslav Urzhumov has designed a plastic disk that makes a small object placed in its hollow center invisible to frequencies from 9.7 to 10.1 GHz (close to the range used by radar speed guns). Holes in the doughnut-shaped cloak can eliminate an object’s shadow and decrease its ability to scatter light. In effect, the cloak guides the microwave beams around the object so they can’t bounce back—rendering it invisible.

Toylike blocks make lightweight, strong structures | Matter & Energy | Science News

Toylike blocks make lightweight, strong structures | Matter & Energy | Science News: A carbon-fiber skeleton of Tinkertoy-like building blocks is 10 times as stiff as structures of similar densities. And because the framework is made of mostly identical pieces, broken parts can be easily swapped out for new ones...

 Cheung played with several designs, slicing shapes out of cardboard and plywood before settling on the repeatable unit: a flat “X” of carbon-fiber composite, with a hole in the center and a loop at the end of each arm. The unit is 2 inches long, Cheung says, but could scale to virtually any size. “You can think of it as a really high-performing Lego,” he says.

Team demonstrates gels that can be moved, controlled by light

Team demonstrates gels that can be moved, controlled by light: Using computer modeling, the Pitt team demonstrated that the gels "ran away" when exposed to the light, exhibiting direct, sustained motion. The team also factored in heat—combining the light and local variations in temperature to further control the samples' motions...

"Consider, for example, that you could take one sheet of hydrogel and, with the appropriate use of light, fashion it into a lens-shaped object, which could be used in optical applications", added Balazs.
The team also demonstrated that the gels could undergo dynamic reconfiguration, meaning that, with a different combination of lights, the gel could be used for another purpose.

A Mind-Blowing Dome Made by 6,500 Computer-Guided Silkworms | Wired Design | Wired.com

A Mind-Blowing Dome Made by 6,500 Computer-Guided Silkworms | Wired Design | Wired.com: An aluminum scaffold was constructed and a CNC robot was used to string a lattice of silk starter threads across it in patterns that would provide a base for the worms to operate. The aluminum and string frame was hung in an atrium at MIT and thousands of silkworms were released on it...
The project is a unique hybrid of structural and biological engineering. Using her custom-developed CAD tools, Oxman was able to control the material properties of the pavilion in much the same way an architect would specify a certain type of steel to use in a building. The density of the starter strings determined the opacity of a given panel. The structure’s integrity arose from their orientation. The output can’t be fully controlled, but the emergent behavior of the worms can lead to unexpected textures and features that would be impossible to plan.

Printed inchworm robot makes self-assembly moves (w/ Video)

Printed inchworm robot makes self-assembly moves (w/ Video): This robot uses shape-memory polymers (SMPs) for the self-folding process. These are "smart" materials that can go from one state to another via a stimulus such as temperature change. With the SMPs, the inchworm robot is able to fold into desired shapes. Once it folds, a battery and motor are attached. With enough current, the team's robot was able to fold into its functional form with fold angle deviations within six degrees. The printed robot demonstrated locomotion at a speed of two millimeters per second.

Network of cell mimics comes to life

Network of cell mimics comes to life: Built with a custom-made 3-D printer by scientists at the University of Oxford in England, the “droplet network” comprises tens of thousands of tiny water droplets connected by lipid layers...
To create the squishy, raftlike networks, the printer squirts a layer of water droplets into an oily solution. Lipids in the oil gather around microscopic water droplets like a cell’s membrane...

Sound cloaks enter the third dimension | Matter & Energy | Science News

Sound cloaks enter the third dimension | Matter & Energy | Science News: ... the researchers came up with a design made up of 60 rings of various sizes that form a cagelike structure around the sphere. Simulations indicated that sound waves scattering off the sphere and the ringed cloak would interfere with each other and cancel out.

Because the cloak did not need to steer sound waves in complicated ways, Sánchez-Dehesa and his team built it out of plastic with the help of a 3-D printer.  They hung their creation from the ceiling of an echo-free chamber, pointed a speaker at it and played a range of sound frequencies. For most frequencies, the sphere scattered an easily detectable amount of sound. But at 8.55 kilohertz — an audible high pitch — the cloaked sphere became imperceptible to the sensors behind it.

Micro 3-D Printer Creates Tiny Structures in Seconds

Micro 3-D Printer Creates Tiny Structures in Seconds: Today’s printers, including Nanoscribe’s present system, keep the laser beam fixed and move the light-sensitive material along three axes using mechanical stages, which slows down printing. To speed up the process, Nanoscribe’s new tool uses a tiny moving mirror to reflect the laser beam at different angles. Thiel says generating multiple light beams with a microlens array could make the process even faster.

The smallest features that can be created using the Nanoscribe printer measure about 30 nanometers...

3D Printer Recycles Milk Jugs

3D Printer Recycles Milk Jugs: They cut the labels off milk jugs, washed the plastic, and shredded it. Then they ran it through a homemade device that melts and extrudes it into a long, spaghetti-like string of plastic...

The process isn’t perfect. Milk jugs are made of high-density polyethylene, or HDPE, which is not ideal for 3D printing. “HDPE is a little more challenging to print with,” Pearce says. But the disadvantages are not overwhelming. His group made its own climate-controlled chamber using a dorm-room refrigerator and an off-the-shelf teddy-bear humidifier and had good results...

The group determined that making their own filament in an insulated RecycleBot used about 1/10th the energy needed to acquire commercial 3D filament. They also calculated that they used less energy than it would take to recycle milk jugs conventionally.

Brilliant Robot Scraps Can Form Selves Into Anything

Brilliant Robot Scraps Can Form Selves Into Anything: But Skylar Tibbits today offered a very provocative alternative: technology for 3-D printing where the chunks start separated and intelligently arrange themselves into basically any object.

Tibbits’ latest technology for so-called “4-D printing...” uses water to activate and power strands of material that fold themselves into desired shapes.

3-D Printed Octopus Suckers Help Robots Stick | Octopus Chronicles, Scientific American Blog Network

3-D Printed Octopus Suckers Help Robots Stick | Octopus Chronicles, Scientific American Blog Network: Rather than attempt to replicate the octopus’s very keen sense and control, the researchers designed a self-sealing sucker. Still activated by a central vacuum, these suckers are outfitted with individual movable plugs. The plug automatically seals the suction cup closed if it is not touching anything, and it opens when the suction cup comes into contact with an object, allowing pump-driven suction to start. By focusing the suction action on only those cups that are in direct contact with the desired object, this approach also increases the pressure each of those active cups receives.

To get just the right combination of strength and precision, the researchers have been building their prototypes with the help of a multi-material 3-D printer.

New Scientist TV: 3D-printed cyborg muscle produces artificial heartbeat

New Scientist TV: 3D-printed cyborg muscle produces artificial heartbeat:  ...the pump uses the gas released by live yeast to generate pressure and distend a membrane, turning it into an artificial muscle. A valve - activated by electricity produced by a microbial fuel cell - controls the movement of the membrane. It opens to release pressure when the muscle is fully expanded, allowing it to shrink back to its resting state again to begin another cycle.

Walters says that using yeast allows a lot of pressure to be generated quickly.

Team uses fractal geometry to build lighter structures

Team uses fractal geometry to build lighter structures: The first step is to create a hollow metal beam of the size desired for a given project. Next, reengineer the beam by changing its diameter and thickness such that the beam weighs as little as possible but is still able to withstand the weight or pressure it will be subjected to as a final structure. Once that is achieved, label it generation-0. The next step is to create a larger beam made out of generation-0 beams arranged using triangular subdivisions. This next beam is labeled a generation-1 beam...

...the researchers suggest that a solar sail made with a solid metal 100 meter boom (not that anyone is proposing that) could be made to be 10,000 times lighter if a generation-3 beam were used instead.

New metamaterial lens focuses radio waves

New metamaterial lens focuses radio waves: The concave lens exhibits a property called negative refraction...


Prior to this recent paper, Wu and others have studied how certain shapes of metamaterials can affect the propagation of electromagnetic waves. The team came up with a blocky, S-shaped “unit cell” whose shape refracts radio waves in particular directions. Ehrenberg used the unit shape as the basis for his concave lens, creating the rough shape from more than 4,000 unit cells, each only a few millimeters wide.

To fabricate his design, Ehrenberg utilized 3-D printing, building a lens layer by intricate layer from a polymer solution. He then washed away any residue with a high-pressure water jet and coated each layer with a fine mist of copper to give the lens a conductive surface...

The device, which weighs less than a pound, may be used to focus radio waves precisely on molecules to create high-resolution images — images that are currently produced using bulky, heavy and expensive lenses. Ehrenberg says that such a lightweight device could also be mounted on satellites to image stars and other celestial bodies in space, “where you don’t want to bring up a hefty lens.”

Researchers develop printable lasers

Researchers develop printable lasers: The process involves developing lasers based on chiral nematic liquid crystals (LCs), similar to the materials used in flat-panel LCD displays...

Using a custom inkjet printing system, the researchers printed hundreds of small dots of LC materials on to a substrate covered with a wet polymer solution layer. As the polymer solution dries, the chemical interaction and mechanical stress cause the LC molecules to align and turn the printed dots into individual lasers. The researchers believe that this simple process can form lasers on virtually any surface, rigid or flexible, and can potentially be applied using existing printing and publishing equipment (similar to the ones used to print papers or magazines).

3D printing technology could let you print your pharmaceuticals at home

3D printing technology could let you print your pharmaceuticals at home: The idea is still in its fledgling stages, but a pharmaceutical 3D printer would be loaded with simple molecules that would allow it to easily handle carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, plus vegetable oils, paraffin, and other common pharmaceutical ingredients. Cronin told the Guardian that with a relatively small number of "inks," "you can make any organic molecule."