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1 week ago | 
thomasnet.com | Aruna Urs |Audrey Altmann
Have you heard the joke about how many robots it takes to change a lightbulb? Well, the answer is one, just one, according to Northeastern University engineers. They have created a revolutionary hybrid robot that combines, for the first time, the torque and strength of rigid robots with the adaptability and flexibility of soft robots.
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1 week ago | 
thomasnet.com | Aruna Urs |Audrey Altmann
Conveyor belts: you’ve seen them at airports, you’ve seen them in warehouses, and at most, they might stretch a mile or two. But what if we told you there’s a conveyor belt longer than the width of Rhode Island? Stretching 42 miles across the vast, oil-rich terrain of the American Southwest, Atlas Energy Solutions’ conveyor belt is the longest in the U.S. and it’s revolutionizing the way sand is transported for fracking.
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1 week ago | 
thomasnet.com | Aruna Urs |Audrey Altmann
Danish toy manufacturer LEGO has introduced a new type of tire made from recycled ocean-sourced materials, such as fishing nets, ropes, and engine oil. The rSEBS (recycled styrene-ethylene-butylene-styrene)-based tires have already started appearing in select LEGO sets and look identical to the tires LEGO has been producing since 1962.
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2 weeks ago | 
thomasnet.com | Aruna Urs |Audrey Altmann
Scientists from Germany’s Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) have developed a new electronic skin (e-skin) that enables touchless interactions for the first time. Composed of a single global sensor, HZDR’s e-skin, apart from being ultra-thin and flexible, can precisely detect and track magnetic fields, making it a boon for robotics and medical technologies.
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2 weeks ago | 
thomasnet.com | Aruna Urs |Audrey Altmann
UC Berkeley scientists have developed a new 3D printing platform to fabricate lightweight, high-performance antennas for 6G communication systems and aerospace applications such as CubeSats and weather balloons. Called charge programmed multi-material 3D printing (CPD), this new technology harmoniously integrates highly conductive metals and dielectric materials within a single 3D structure. Many previous additive manufacturing methods have struggled to achieve this.
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2 weeks ago | 
thomasnet.com | Aruna Urs |Audrey Altmann
University of Leeds’ STORM Lab has created a new mini magnetic robot system to capture high-resolution 3D ultrasound images deep within the gastrointestinal tract or gut. The highlight of this 3D-printed bot is its unique “oloid,” or rolling design, which allows it to precisely navigate through the human body, perform virtual biopsies, and deliver a real-time diagnosis.
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2 weeks ago | 
thomasnet.com | Aruna Urs |Audrey Altmann
Industrial infrastructure and wildlife conservation make for strange bedfellows — unless you’ve heard of the crocodile conservation happening at the Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station. Turkey Point is among the U.S.’ 54 still functioning nuclear power plants, and its cooling canals have been an unlikely haven for the American crocodile, thanks to restoration efforts undertaken by the power plant’s operator, Florida Power & Light Co. (FPL), since the 1970s.
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3 weeks ago | 
thomasnet.com | Aruna Urs |Audrey Altmann
Do you know that there are more than 6,000 tons of space junk in low Earth Orbit (LEO) traveling at speeds seven times faster than a bullet? If these were to hit people or property in space and on Earth, the consequences would be deadly. Ground-based radar and optical telescopes have been the go-to methods for tracking falling space junk. U.S. scientists have now discovered an even better way to detect such debris: using seismometers, instruments traditionally used to monitor earthquakes.
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4 weeks ago | 
thomasnet.com | Aruna Urs |Audrey Altmann
A Penn State graduate student has flipped a 100-year-old math problem posed by a British aerodynamicist and created an addendum for more efficient wind turbine designs. Divya Tyagi revisited Glauert’s theory on the optimum rotor disk and enhanced it with modern mathematical techniques to improve a wind turbine’s power output. Hermann Glauert was a British aerodynamicist.
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4 weeks ago | 
thomasnet.com | Aruna Urs |Audrey Altmann
Scientists from the U.K.’s Swansea University, King’s College London, and Chile’s University of Bío-Bío have tapped into artificial intelligence to create a new self-healing asphalt that increases a road’s lifespan by 30%. The new invention repairs road cracks autonomously, offering a long-term solution for pothole repairs. Pothole damage in the U.S. alone costs drivers $3 billion annually.
