Researchers have made a smart school of robotic fish that swarm and swim just like the real deal, and they offer promising insights into how developers can improve decentralized, autonomous operations for other gizmos like self-driving vehicles and robotic space explorers. Also, they’re just pretty stinking cute.
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These seven 3D-printed robots, or Bluebots, can synchronize their movements to swim in a group, or Blueswarm, without any outside control, per research published in Science Robotics this month from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.
Equipped with two wide-angle cameras for eyes, each bot navigates their tank by tracking the LEDs lights on their peers. Based on the cues they observe, each robot reacts accordingly using an onboard Raspberry Pi computer and custom algorithm to gauge distance, direction, and heading.
These 3D-Printed Fish Bots Can Swarm and School Like Their Scaly Counterparts
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Researchers have made a smart school of robotic fish that swarm and swim just like the real deal, and they offer promising insights into how developers can improve decentralised, autonomous operations for other gizmos like self-driving vehicles and robotic space explorers. Also, they’re just pretty stinking cute.
Technology that’s typically used to make patterned paper for the fashion industry could also be a used to mass-produce water purification systems and medical devices.
Caitlin Howell, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Maine, has been working with Sappi North America in Westbrook to explore the use of the company s patterned-release paper for use in biotechnological applications.
The use of papermaking equipment could be a way to produce biotechnology devices at high volume and low cost, according to a news release.
Howell is leading an initiative that also includes researchers at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.
This laser-steering microrobot could refine minimally invasive surgeries
Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University.
Robotic engineers from Harvard’s Wyss Institute and John A. Paulson School for Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) have developed a laser-steering microrobot that can be integrated with existing endoscopic tools, which are used in minimally invasive surgeries.
The ends of endoscopic tools must be highly flexible to enable visualization and manipulation of the surgical site in the target tissue.
In the case of energy-delivering endoscopic tools, which allow surgeons to cut or dry tissues and stop internal bleeds, a heat-generating energy source is added to the end of the device.