Robotics, Automation, Transportation

New advances in science are often inspired by the natural world and a new type of hydrogel robot is no exception. It aims to emulate glass-eel larvae which are clear when hatched. This near transparency provides the eels with an effective camouflage mechanism, designed to help them complete their long journey from the ocean to the rivers where they carry out the adult part of their life cycle.

Periplaneta americana, commonly known as the American cockroach, one of the most dreaded pest of them all, has now crept its way into robotic studies, thankfully far from the reaches of our homes!

When robots arrive, they do so in style! We stand witness to some of the greatest technological inventions in history, an area of pioneer research being the use of robotics in medicine and healthcare. The aim is to enhance quality of living by means of artificial intelligence.

Whilst the majority of flying drones have so far been based on a quadcopter design with four rotating blades, there are safety issues with these coming into close contact with humans, as well as a lack of efficiency and agility which limits their use in rescue operations. Researchers are therefore looking for more efficient flying drones and to that end, the National Science Foundation in the US gave researchers $2.2 million to come up with a new design.

Many of us might assume that with the arrival of the digital age, the function of libraries will naturally cease to exist. Although this is partly true and in some ways a worrying trend, there is hope for these institutions. Many book enthusiasts, children, college students and professors still insist on the sanctity of libraries and visit them frequently for educational purposes, leisure reading or otherwise. There’s nothing like a good old book in hand!

Most people have heard of the Great Barrier Reef, even if they haven’t been there themselves. The world’s largest coral reef contains over 3000 individual reef systems and is the only living thing on earth which is visible from space.

One of the most ambitious smart-road projects, the Cooperative ITS Corridor, started about one year ago in Europe, and it is expected to shepherd cars from Rotterdam through Munich, Frankfurt, and on to Vienna without a single interruption, by warning drivers of upcoming roadwork and other road obstacles.

If you had been on the shoreline of Portland, Oregon in April 2016 and had seen a fairly unremarkable gray trimaran cruising the shore, you probably wouldn’t have looked twice. But beneath this relatively plain exterior lies a wealth of innovative and cutting-edge technology.

Kids accidentally swallow inedible objects a fair number of times and parents reflexively panic hoping for it to pass through the body soon and not get caught in the esophagus or gut, the waiting raising their anxiety levels! The United States records about 3,500 cases every year of hazardous button batteries, found in toys, watches etc, that are being ingested resulting in a detriment to the consumer’s health like chemical burning of tissues and sometimes even death.

Whilst salmon often used to be considered a luxury item, thanks to the advances in fish farming it is now a weekly item on many people’s shopping lists. In fact, worldwide consumption of salmon is now three times higher than it was in 1980. The transition from high-cost food to weekly commodity is in part thanks to the aquaculture system of farming salmon in oceanic pens.

Class Insecta consists of the largest number of species in the world with over 1 million documented types, and they seem to have roused humans and their research owing to the insects’ extraordinary competence while maintaining body weight-balance and mid-flight control due to their natural anatomy. The wings flutter at a high frequency, approximately 120 times/min, allowing them to easily fly with a great momentum and dodge obstacles in their path, simultaneously.

With the fast development of mobile embedded photo and video cameras, the demand for high quality self-operated image acquisition devices has also increased, imposing additional requirements to the future technology: we want an automated device, which follows us outdoors and continuously focuses on us no matter which activities we perform (e.g. sports).