Collaborate Disseminate
While it doesn’t look like a traditional robot, the hydrogel robot from [Zi Liang Wu] forms a möbius strip and can be activated by light. They also experimented with shaping …read more Continue reading Möbius String Robot Goes Round and Round
The usual way to get biological tissues and materials like gels and metals to stick together is using sutures, adhesives or both. Although this generally works, it’s far from ideal, …read more Continue reading Using Electroadhesion To Reversibly Adhere Metals and Graphite to Hydrogels and Tissues
3D printing has opened up a world of possibilities in plastic, food, concrete, and other materials. Now, MIT engineers have found a way to add brain implants to the list. This technology has the potential to replace electrodes used for monitoring and implants that stimulate brain tissue in order to …read more
Continue reading Printed Brain Implants Give New Meaning to Neuroplasticity
“Amazing how with only the power of 3D-printing, two different computers, hundreds of dollars in CNC machinery, a lathe, and modern microcontroller magic, I can almost decorate a cupcake as well as a hyperactive ten-year-old.” We can think of no better way to sum up [Justin]’s experiment in CNC frosting …read more
Continue reading Syringe Pump Turns CNC Machine Into A Frosting Bot
One of the essential problems of bio-robotics is actuators. The rotors, bearings, and electrical elements of the stepper motors and other electromechanical drives we generally turn to for robotics projects are not really happy in living systems. But building actuators the way nature does it — from muscle tissue — opens up a host of applications. That’s where this complete how-to guide on building and controlling muscle-powered machines comes in.
Coming out of the [Rashid Bashir] lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Campaign, the underlying principles are simple, which of course is the key to their power. The technique …read more
Continue reading Genetically Engineered Muscle Cells Power Tiny Bio-Robots
Well, this is adorable. Continue reading ‘Mood Robots’ Express Themselves by Changing Colour Like Octopuses