Miscellaneous

Hex Bug Micro Robotic Creatures by Innovation First. Hex bugs are 5 different types of robotic toys: Hex Bug Inchworm, Crab, Original Hex Bug, Ant, and the Hex Bug Nano. Some of these robots are remote controlled r/c, and some are antonymous with sensors and intelligent-seeming behavior! Miniature playsets are now available for the Nano

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Directed by Liam Lynch. From TMBG's album Nanobots.

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There's no shortage of ideas about how to use nanotechnology, but one of the major hurdles is how to manufacture some of the new products on a large scale. With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), UMass Amherst chemical engineer Jim Watkins and his team are working to make nanotechnology more practical for industrial scale manufacturing. One of the projects they're working on at the NSF Center for Hierarchical Manufacturing (CHM) is a roll-to-roll process for nanotechnology that is similar to what is used in traditional manufacturing. They're also designing a process to manufacture printable coatings that improve the way solar panels absorb and direct light. They're even investigating the use of self-assembling nanoscale products that could have applications for many industries.

"New nanotechnologies can't impact the US economy until practical methods are available for producing products using them in high volumes, at low cost. CHM is researching the fundamental scientific and engineering barriers that impede such commercialization, and innovating new technologies to surmount those barriers," notes Bruce Kramer, senior advisor in the NSF Engineering Directorate's Division of Civil, Mechanical & Manufacturing Innovation (CMMI), which funded the research.

"The NSF Center for Hierarchical Manufacturing is developing platform technologies for the economical manufacture of next generation devices and systems for applications in computing, electronics, energy conversion, resource conservation and human health," explains Khershed Cooper, a program director in the CMMI Division. "The Center creates fabrication tools that are enabling versatile and high-rate continuous processes for the manufacture of nanostructures that are systematically integrated into higher order structures using bottom-up and top-down techniques. For example, CHM is designing and building continuous, roll-to-roll nanofabrication systems that can print, in high-volume, 3D nanostructures and multi-layer nanodevices at sub-100 nanometer resolution, and in the process realize hybrid electronic/optical/mechanical nanosystems."

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New technology developed by MIT and several other institutions could make it possible to track the position of nano particles as they move within the body or inside a cell.

"Nanoparticles get a magnetic handle"
New method produces particles that can glow with color-coded light and be manipulated with magnets. Watch Video

by David L. Chandler
October 9, 2014

At the same time, the nano particles could be manipulated precisely by applying a magnetic field to pull them along and control where they go.

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As computing devices progress toward smaller and more efficient designs, Michigan Engineers have taken the lead in millimeter sized units that can perform on many alternating platforms. Dennis Sylvester and David Blaauw, professors of UM’s Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, have developed units capable of harvesting solar power to utilize wireless communication, pressure and temperature sensors and even still image and video processing.

The design of each computer is developed at Michigan under a team of post-graduate students under Sylvester and Blaauw’s supervision. Each unit is assembled in layers and is capable of being customized to a particular function. While testing has been developed to place these units on top of tumors inside cancer patients to determine the results of chemotherapy, the range of applications seem unlimited.

Recently, as validation of the milestone these data gathering modules represent, samples of the team’s computers were featured at the Computer History Museum outside of Palo Alto, California. Future development of this technology is going to break down the size constriction even smaller. At a third of a millimeter, the hopes are these micro computers would be able to be placed inside biological cells to monitor and broadcast cellular activity.

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Assistant Professor Sarah Bergbreiter
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Institute for Systems Research
Abstract
Research on mobile microrobots has been ongoing for the last 20 years, but the few robots that have walked have done so at slow speeds on smooth silicon wafers. However, ants can move at speeds over 40 body lengths/second on surfaces from picnic tables to front lawns. What challenges do we still need to tackle for microrobots to achieve this incredible mobility? This talk will discuss some of the mechanisms and motors we have designed and fabricated to enable robot mobility at the insect size scale. Mechanisms utilize new microfabrication processes to incorporate materials with widely varying moduli and functionality for more complexity in smaller packages. Actuators are designed to provide significant improvements in force density, efficiency and robustness over previous microactuators. Results include a 4mm jumping mechanism that can be launched approximately 35 cm straight up as well as a 300mg robot that jumps 8 cm with on-board power, sensing, actuation and control.
Biorgraphy
Sarah Bergbreiter joined the University of Maryland, College Park in 2008 as an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, with a joint appointment in the Institute for Systems Research. She received her B.S.E. degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University in 1999. After a short introduction to the challenges of sensor networks at a small startup company, she received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley in 2004 and 2007 with a focus on microrobotics. She received the DARPA Young Faculty Award in 2008 and the NSF CAREER Award in 2011 for her research on engineering robotic systems down to sub-millimeter size scales. She has also received the Best Conference Paper Award at IEEE ICRA 2010 on her work incorporating new materials into microrobotics and the NTF Award at IEEE IROS 2011 for early demonstrations of jumping microrobots.

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It's been said that people don't even realize when they're in the midst of a revolution. One one millionth of a millimetre: that's the size of a nanometre. And that's the scale at which nanotechnology is slowly starting a revolution. Clothes that generate electricity. Supercomputers built at home. Complete societal upheaval.

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Drops of water coated in a powder that reacts to laser light creates a tiny engine that can pull more than 150 times its weight across water

"Laser-driven liquid marbles can push 150 times their own weight"

by Jacob Aron
April 13, 2016

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One of the first classes to offer undergraduates a hands-on experience with cutting-edge micro/nano engineering, 2.674 incorporates the latest technology, inspiring students to the possibilities of a whole new field.

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Carbon nanotubes in a dish assemble themselves into a nanowire in seconds under the influence of a custom-built Tesla coil created by scientists at Rice University.

But the scientists don't limit their aspirations for the phenomenon they call Teslaphoresis to simple nanowires.

The team led by Rice research scientist Paul Cherukuri sees its invention as setting a path toward the assembly of matter from the bottom up on nano and macro scales.

There are even hints of a tractor beam effect in watching an assembled nanowire being pulled toward the coil.

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BYU chemists have discovered that bacteria can survive impacts at incredible speeds. Smashing into a solid wall at 670 miles per hour doesn’t even leave a mark. BYU Chemistry professor Daniel Austin and his graduate students are learning just how hard it can be to kill bacteria.The research group, funded by NASA, is studying high velocity impact of bacterial spores. More specifically, the group is trying to find the speed limit above which bacteria won’t survive when they crash into a hard surface.

“There should be a velocity at which they’ll splat and die, but we haven’t reached it,” Austin said. “We can get pretty close to the speed of sound, and we’re planning to go to higher velocities in the near future, but it’s not easy to do.” To test velocity, bacteria are loaded into a vacuum chamber and then launched by a blast of air at speeds nearing 300 meters per second.

The group’s recently published study in Planetary and Space Science is the first of its kind to test the impact survivability rate of bare bacteria.

Although the main focus of the research is answering the question of how much force the bacteria can withstand, NASA has funded the research because of the planetary protection implications of the study: if bacteria can survive the ejection from one planet and the impact of landing on another planet, there are potential concerns about cross contamination of bacteria between those planets. However, Austin is quick to acknowledgethat there are other factors, like UV light, that may kill the bacteria in transition.

Even though the initial publication’s lead authors Brandon Barney and Sara Pratt have graduated, Austin continues to mentor current students as they develop the research. The group is now collaborating with Microbiology professor Richard Robison as they continue the quest for higher impact speeds. They anticipate that blasting bacteria at one kilometer per second (more than 2,200 miles per hour) should be more than enough to kill the bacteria, but the group hasn’t yet been able to create those speeds in the lab.

“We seem so frequently surprised at what bacteria can survive, and this just adds to the list,” Austin said. “Our understanding of the limits of life have expanded a lot since the 1970s as we find bacteria surviving and even thriving under extreme conditions.”

In testing the limits of bacteria, Austin’s team has additionally observed an unusual elasticity of the bacterial spores, which may have potential applications in nanotechnology.

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Using Liquid Crystalline Elastomers (LCEs), researchers created a bioinspired soft robot. The 15-millimeter long micro-robot harvests and is controlled by spatially modulated green laser beam to mimic caterpillar locomotion.

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Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed tiny ultrasound-powered robots that can swim through blood, removing harmful bacteria and the toxins they produce.

Berta Esteban-Fernández de Ávila and Professor Joseph Wang from the Department of NanoEngineering at UC San Diego describe the project in this video.

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A team of engineers at MIT have developed a novel method to mass-produce tiny robots, no bigger than a cell, quickly, easily and accurately with little to no external stimulus.

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Microrobots developed by Caltech’s Lihong Wang and Wei Gao may provide a new way of treating cancers in the digestive tract. They travel through the stomach and intestines carrying medication until they are activated by a pulse of laser light. When activated, they travel forward on a jet of tiny bubbles until they embed themselves into nearby tissue, where they slowly release their medicine.

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Artificial intelligence (AI) was given the task of removing individual molecules from a closed molecular layer. First, a connection is established between the tip of the microscope (top) and the molecule (middle). Then the AI tries to remove the molecule by moving the tip without breaking the contact. Initially, the movements are random. After each pass, the AI learns from the collected experiences and becomes better and better.

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Scientists have engineered a spray that turns inanimate materials into mobile, insect-scale machines. The spray contains particles of iron, polyvinyl alcohol and gluten, which combine with water to form sticky, magnetic skins, or “M-skins.” Thanks to the spray’s magnetic properties, the scientists managed to bring ordinary objects to life, like origami paper and cotton thread, according to a paper published last week in Science Robotics.

The researchers captured footage of the “millirobots” rolling, swimming, and walking—literally strutting their stuff. But they also performed more purposeful tasks: simulated biomedical procedures. Robotic catheters navigated narrow blood vessels and egg-shaped capsules delivered drugs into living rabbit stomachs.

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