[ad_1] By itself, the study revealed what was possible with the material. You could turn the friction (and thus the fluid state) “on and off like a switch” just by varying the pressure. However, Swansea University also suggested this could have a significant impact on engineering going forward. Scientists are already hoping to use DST […]
Category: engineering
MIT fit tens of thousands of artificial brain synapses on a single chip
[ad_1] “So far, artificial synapse networks exist as software. We’re trying to build real neural network hardware for portable artificial intelligence systems,” says Jeehwan Kim, associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. “Imagine connecting a neuromorphic device to a camera on your car, and having it recognize lights and objects and make a decision immediately, […]
AI-powered Lego sorter knows the shape of every brick
[ad_1] The universal Lego sorter — which is made up of 10,000 Lego bricks — took two years to design, build and perfect. Six Lego motors and nine servo motors power the conveyor belts and agitators that transport the pieces, brick-by-brick, to a video camera. A Raspberry Pi then processes the video feed and streams […]
BILL-E is a cute robot that builds structures block by block
[ad_1] The team calls their creation BILL-E, short for Bipedal Isotropic Lattice Locomoting Explorer — and, yes, it’s named after WALL-E. Each one looks like a small arm, with a hinge at the middle that gives the robot its signature inchworm-like gait. At both ends of the arm, BILL-E features tools for clamping down on […]
Apple’s Seattle workforce will quintuple by 2024
[ad_1] In order to accommodate the new workforce, Apple is leasing two 12-story buildings in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood. The building’s location will be at 333 Dexter, only one block west of Amazon’s main campus. Apple and Amazon will be far from the only tech players in the neighborhood; both Google and Facebook have […]
This guy built his own smartwatch and so can you
[ad_1] Smarchbme, who calls his stunning creation the “Smarch Watch,” said it took him a few weeks to build the fully-functional, self-coded device, which boasts a battery life of seven days and takes just 2.5 hours to fully recharge (because of course he went the whole hog and built a charging cradle, too). The watch […]
Researchers designed a shape-shifting airplane wing
[ad_1] In a paper in the journal Smart Materials and Structures, the research team explains how it has radically redesigned the airplane wing. Their new structure is a lightweight lattice framework, made of thousands of repeating, tiny triangles of matchstick-like struts, covered in a thin polymer layer. Because this “metamaterial” is mostly comprised of empty […]