Collaborate Disseminate
We spend a lot of time here at Hackaday talking about drone incidents and today we’re looking into the hazard of operating in areas where people are present. Accidents happen, and a whether it’s a catastrophic failure or just a dead battery pack, the chance of a multi-rotor aircraft crashing …read more
Continue reading Safety Systems for Stopping An Uncontrolled Drone Crash
We’ve seen a number of recent improvements to the CRISPR gene editing method, from enhanced precision to novel techniques to block the process. But despite all these innovations, the technique is generally only able to modify one single gene … Continue reading CRISPR breakthrough allows scientists to edit multiple genes simultaneously
Getting real, physical movements accurately depicted in the digital world remains a challenge for programmers and engineers, but a newly developed glove promises to advance the tech significantly. It’s able to capture hand movements with much… Continue reading Smart glove uses stretch-sensing tech for highly accurate hand gesture capture
The shorter a drone’s propellers, the less efficient they are at keeping it airborne. That factor, along with compact, low-capacity batteries, is the reason that small drones can’t fly for very long. A new two-prop drone, however, is claimed … Continue reading Ring-shaped dual-prop drone boasts twice the flight time as quadcopters
We’ve seen robots that can walk, trot, run, and even do backflips, but now a student team is working on a rover robot prototype that hops about like a springbok. Designed and built by students from ETH Zurich and ZHAW Zurich, the SpaceBok bei… Continue reading SpaceBok robot designed to bound around in low-gravity environments
While shape-memory materials do have some interesting potential applications, many of them require the application of heat in order to change shape – and that could cause problems, in temperature-sensitive environments such as the human body…. Continue reading Stiffer shape-memory material utilizes magnetically-activated liquid
Wouldn’t it be nice if you had a flying machine that could maneuver in any direction while rotating around any axis while maintaining both thrust and torque? Attach a robot arm and the machine could position itself anywhere and move objects around as needed. [Dario Brescianini] and [Raffaello D’Andrea] of the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control at ETH Zurich, have come up with their Omnicopter that does just that using eight rotors in configurations that give it six degrees of freedom. Oh, and it plays fetch, as shown in the first video below.
Each propeller is reversible to provide …read more
Continue reading A Flying, Fetching, Helping-Hand Omnicopter
Satellites make many of our everyday activities possible, and the technology continues to improve by leaps and bounds. A prototype, recently completed by [Arda Tüysüz]’s team at ETH Zürich’s Power Electronics Systems Lab in collaboration with its Celeroton spinoff, aims to improve satellite attitude positioning with a high speed, magnetically levitated motor.
Beginning as a doctoral thesis work led by [Tüysüz], the motor builds on existing technologies, but has been arranged into a new application — with great effect. Currently, the maneuvering motors on board satellites are operated at a low rpm to reduce wear, must be sealed in a …read more
Continue reading Modest Motor Has Revolutionary Applications
The Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control, ETHC Zurich is developing a new flying ring. Continue reading Watch This Flying Ring Propel Itself Around the ‘Flying Machine Arena’