Meet The World's Smallest Flying Robot: The RoboBee

Posted by Andreas Christodoulou

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Hello THE OFFICIAL ANDREASCY lovers! 😍👍

As you already know, I'm working a lot these days and this is something that takes a lot of my personal time. It keeps me away from my Blog, but I'm still active on social media.

Ok let's see today's topic. A team of Science folks came up with something interesting that really toke our attention. Researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) put a decade's work into developing the penny-sized robot, before it took off for the first time.

They have created a robot the size of a fly that makes uses of smart composite materials and piezoelectric technology performing the agile manoeuvres of an insect. RoboBee, which is built from carbon fiber, weighs a fraction of a gram and has super-fast electric "muscles" to power its wings that can even sit on a fingertip.

A recent paper lays out the progress of the robot’s fabrication and flight, but two major hurdles remain in the RoboBee’s flightpath. One hurdle is how to power the bee and the other is how to give it a digital brain small enough to keep the bee in flight. 

In the video below (Video courtesy of Kevin Ma and Pakpong Chirarattananon) demonstrating RoboBee’s maneuvering capabilities, you can see that the current prototypes are still connected to computers and power sources. Scientists hope to cut the cord as the project develops, until they can create entirely autonomous colonies of these.

It’s simultaneously frightening and exciting. Guess what military will do with it! 😮 

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*by andreascy*

Chemistry World : 3D Printing of a Soft Network

Posted by Andreas Christodoulou

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3D Printing has the potential to revolutionize the way we make almost everything. Designers and engineers in the aerospace and automotive sectors have been using the process for decades to build prototypes. Many complex parts manufactured by 3D Printing are now present on aircraft, satellites, medical industry etc. etc.

3D Printing technology is advancing rapidly and its cost is falling dramatically. And this means something that was once restricted to a few elite industries is quickly becoming  more widely available and affordable. It's going to open up so many new possibilities for new businesses, new business models, start-up companies, new products and much more!

Now lets learn about a synthetic material capable of performing some of the functions of living cells : Oxford University scientists have used a specially modified 3D prototype printer to lay down a network of interconnected, electrically conductive droplets. 

This technology could find it's way into tissue engineering applications, helping to support cells that are being grown into healthy new organs - replace damaged human tissue or deliver drugs to specific locations.

"We aren't trying to make materials that faithfully resemble tissues, but rather structures that can carry out the functions of tissues," says Professor Hagan Bayley, who led the research reported in the journal Science.

3D Printing lets you build an object as complex as an organ, layer by layer or droplet by droplet, explains Cameron Ferris a research associate from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science at the University of Wollongong.

Read the full story at Chemistry World.
Related topics : 3D Printing Technology - Make things by printing them : How it works
Science Nation - Printable Robots Designed to be Consumer friendly, Inexpensive
Hi-Tech & Custom Designed 3D Printed Prosthetics
The Tomorrow Project : Conversations about Synthetic Biology
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*by andreascy*

US Chemists Developed a Heat - Fire Resistant Camouflage Makeup that Protects Soldiers

Posted by Andreas Christodoulou

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The heat of a bomb blast or IED explosion is so intense that it can fry the skin of any troop unlucky to be near. If service members are wearing camo paint, the consequences can be even worse: most makeup is oil or wax-based and can ignite instantly in a flash of heat and pressure. 

Camouflage makeup can do more than hide soldiers from their enemies though. Yeap, this camo paint brings a new era in shielding soldiers from heat threat.

This new form of a heat reflective camouflage paint shields soldiers faces in the field from the searing heat of those bomb blasts. This Next - Generation Makeup was developed by Robert Lochhead and a team from the University of Southern Mississippi, US, at the direction of the Department of Defense. 

The paint replaces its traditional carbon base with silicone that is non-flammable and can absorb heat - A chemical challenge to develop. The change means that just a thin layer of camouflage face paint could not only help soldiers escape detection, but prevent burn injuries and facial scarring from run-ins with explosives. 

The heat-resistant makeup not only provides protection from the searing temperatures of roadside bomb blasts and other explosions but it could also safeguard firefighters from more serious burns.

It keeps the left-hand strip at below 100°C after 10s under a blowtorch, whereas the unprotected strip reaches 400°C. Check out the video!

Learn more at Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)

Feel free to Like, Share & Comment!

*by andreascy*

Chemistry World : Why can we walk on custard? Hitting custard with an aluminium rod

Posted by Andreas Christodoulou

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As once famously demonstrated on a UK television show (video), you can walk over a swimming pool filled with custard. Two US physicists have now explained why. 

Being a mixture of cornflour and milk, with a dash a vanilla essence, instant custard consists of a dense suspension of microscopic particles. Such suspensions are well known to harden on impact, but no one really knew why. Most scientists thought it had something to do with a process known as shear thickening, whereby these suspensions become more viscous when a shear force is applied to them. 

The problem with this explanation, though, is that shear forces are applied parallel to the suspension, whereas an impact, such as that produced by walking over custard, applies a force at right angles. 

"All references to this phenomenon in the literature were invoked in tiny shear experiments and this is very different from running on the surface - imagine sliding an object across the surface instead of smacking the object into the surface," explains Scott Waitukaitis at the University of Chicago, US. "What's more, these experiments always exhibited a maximum in stress which they could not exceed, suggesting that the suspensions were 10-100 times too weak for running on the surface to be possible." 

So, together with his colleague Heinrich Jaeger, Waitukaitis decided to investigate what happened when he dropped an aluminium rod onto 25 litres of custard or, more accurately, a suspension of cornflour and water. To do this, he studied the impact using a variety of different techniques, including high-speed video, an accelerometer, a force sensor and x-ray videography. 

What he discovered (video) was that the force of the impact squashed the particles in the suspension together, forming a depression in the surface and an expanding solid region of jammed together particles below this depression. Just like the way in which a snowplough jams snow particles together into a solid mass. As a result, the falling rod initially comes to an almost complete halt on the surface of the suspension, before slowly sinking as the solid region gradually "melts" away. 

"The impact causes the particles below to compact into a temporarily jammed solid, which grows out from the impact site in a manner reminiscent of a snowplough," Waitukaitis tells Chemistry World. 

Itai Cohen, a physicist at Cornell University in Ithaca, US, who also explores the behaviour of particle suspensions, thinks this is a great piece of work. "It was a joy to read the Waitukaitis and Jaeger paper," he says. "The mechanism proposed by the authors to explain the effect is very simple and well supported by their experimental data." 

As well as explaining why we can walk on custard, this work could also have important practical applications. "There aren't many materials out there that can switch from soft to hard almost instantaneously," says Waitukaitis. "What's more, these materials do it automatically – they sense how hard they are being hit and respond accordingly. This has obvious usefulness in everything from construction to hydraulics to personal protection."

Liked our topic? Check also :

Chemistry World : Making graphene supercapacitors with a DVD writer

*by andreascy*

TED : E.O. Wilson - Advice to young scientists

Posted by Andreas Christodoulou

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"The world needs you, badly," begins celebrated biologist E.O. Wilson in his letter to a young scientist. 

Previewing his upcoming book, he gives advice collected from a lifetime of experience -- reminding us that wonder and creativity are the center of the scientific life.

*by andreascy*

Chemistry World : Making graphene supercapacitors with a DVD writer

Posted by Andreas Christodoulou

Description :

Imagine having an energy storage device that stores as much energy as a conventional battery, yet, can be charged 100 to 1000 times faster. 

Supercapacitors store charge in electrochemical double layers whereas batteries store charge through electrochemical reactions. Although supercapacitors can charge and discharge much faster than batteries, they are still limited by low energy densities and slow rate capabilities. 

Researchers at UCLA have successfully used an inexpensive precursor (graphite oxide) to produce high-performance graphene-based supercapacitors using a computerized LightScribe DVD drive. 

These devices exhibit ultrahigh energy density values in different electrolytes approaching those of batteries, yet they can be charged in seconds. 

The devices can be charged and discharged for more than 10,000 cycles without losing much in performance compared with a normal life-time of less than 1000 cycles typical for batteries. Additionally, the devices are completely flexible and maintain excellent performance under high mechanical stress.

Read more at :

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2012/March/graphene-dvd-player-burn-supercapacitor.asp

Check also :

UF : Researchers envision a promising new technique - Writing graphene circuitry with ion "pens"

*by andreascy*