futuretech | TechieTonics

Squarepusher and Z-Machines: Music Performing System

April 11, 2014April 11, 2014 Pooja Kashyap

Squarepusher, UK based recording artist famous for the live instrumental playing and digital signal processing has again hit the music world but this time, in a collaborative effort with the Z-Machines, Japan’s party robot band. The evolved band has come up with a 78-fingered guitarist stringing out with 12 picks and a dreadlocked robot drummer. The effort is to explode the stereotypical myth, says Squarepusher where people think human touch or emotion is necessary to churn out the melody, which goes into the music. He wanted to prove that machines…

Biomimicry: Insect-Inspired Micro-Robots For Stealthy Surveillance

April 11, 2014July 2, 2014 Neha Shukla

Drawing inspiration from tiny insects, researchers at the University of Maryland, are developing the world’s tiniest mobile robot, suitably named as micro robots. These tiny robots are designed to take the long distance leap just as bugs do, with the aim of moving quickly or jump over any obstacle with ease in extremely rough terrain. Sarah Bergbreiter leading the research and other teammates from UM, envision the micro robots helping rescue teams in searching victims by quickly crawling through the rubble, at the disaster site, where humans and other traditional…

Medical Droid to Perform Surgeries Inside the Human Body: New Endoscopic System

April 10, 2014April 9, 2014 Neha Shukla

Robot assisted surgeries are not new and is being widely used by the surgeons to perform minimal invasive surgeries with great precision. To further extend the benefits of robot assisted minimally invasive surgery such as quicker recovery and shorter hospital stay, Flex system has been designed. This will allow more patients to undergo minimal invasive surgeries, thus cutting down the waiting time in hospitals.

10 Festo Robots Based on Their Biological Models: Biomimicry

April 5, 2014April 12, 2014 Pooja Kashyap

Festo, a Germany based industrial control and automation company has been into research and development of bionics since more than two decades. It collaborated with renowned universities, institutes, development companies and private inventors across the globe and launched the Bionic Learning Network during 2006. And since then it has been delving into the subject and bringing about the best of biomimicry. Every time their new project gets into air, they prove how they are able to merge industrial automation, and combining electronics with pneumatics in new and efficient ways. Here…

New Laser Technology Allows for Controlling Lightning Strikes

April 2, 2014 Pooja Kashyap

Researchers at the University of Arizona and the University of Central Florida have created a technology that has an ability of beaming high-intensity lasers all the way through the layers of atmosphere hence crossing the limitations that it had before. The research is still in its testing phase but the optical scientists envision that it might steer lightning strikes away from human inhabited areas and buildings. Extending the laser beam Lasers undergo diffraction because of which it fades away after beaming some feet only. This phenomenon does not allow it…

Bioengineered Self Healing Muscle, Successfully Grown in Laboratory

April 2, 2014April 2, 2014 Neha Shukla

Biomedical engineers have finally achieved success in growing skeletal muscle under a laboratory conditions. These laboratory grown muscles, similar to real muscle are capable of contracting and expanding quickly. Most important breakthrough in the research is that the muscles when implanted in mice were capable of healing itself from any injuries, which was not possible till now.

Water Free Robotic Cleaning System Takes Over The Ketura Sun Solar Park

April 2, 2014April 3, 2014 Neha Shukla

The increasing consumption of electricity, due to rise in population and limited availability of natural resources, countries have been focusing on generating energy from alternative sources. Sun energy in one among them and is widely preferreddue to its long hours availability at no cost at all. Though its conversion technology involves crystalline panels and other components, the panels require a regular look after to sustain effectively for years and decades. The large capacity solar plants consisting huge number of these panels suffer some difficulty in smooth operations as dust, sand…

SociBot-Mini Reacts to Expressions by Displaying Various Moods

March 31, 2014March 31, 2014 Neha Shukla

Will Jackson and his team of researchers at Engineered Arts in Penryn, UK, have developed an interactive, one of its kind bot known as SociBot-Mini. The robot distinctive attribute is its face that is capable of displaying distinct moods and can react to expressions of individuals looking at it.

Cybathlon 2016: The Championship for Robot-Assisted Parathletes

March 26, 2014March 26, 2014 Pooja Kashyap

ETH Zurich in collaboration with the Swiss National Competence Center of Research in Robotics have attempted to take Paralympics to the next level by coalescing the conventional prosthetics with robotics. There has already been an incremental improvement with the equipments being employed by the players in the Paralympic Games including but not limited to prosthetic limbs and swimsuits. If we talk about the props like bows & arrows, cycles, wheels, we would agree that taking these equipments to the higher level of proficiency is not a difficult job than enhancing…

New Computer Vision System: Emotion Recognition

March 22, 2014March 21, 2014 Neha Shukla

Everyone, in some point or the other in life, must have faked of being in pain or being ill, to escape from going school, college, office or so on. We humans are not always correct to distinguish a fake emotion from the genuine one. Lately, researchers have developed a computer system that can easily distinguish when an individual is genuinely in pain or is just faking it away more accurately than the humans.

Protean Electric’s Gearless, Direct-Drive System: An In-Wheel Motor Concept

March 21, 2014May 16, 2014 Pooja Kashyap

Protean Electric, an automotive start-up is paving way towards revolutionizing electric cars with its in-wheel motor design. Beijing roads will first experience this radical technology. Like the EcoMotors, Protean Electric’s preferred the East Asia since the government is very supportive towards technology that evangelizes fuel efficiency and air quality. In-Wheel Motor Concept Generally, central motor in an electric vehicle is under bonnet that transmits power down to the rotating shaft, which further sends torque to the axels. But in the Protean system, small motors, which is responsible for creating power, is…

Microplasma Transistors for Smartphones and Nuclear Environment

March 20, 2014 Pooja Kashyap

Researchers at the University of Utah have created one of the most minuscule plasma transistors that can resist soaring temperatures and ionizing radiation that could be seen in a nuclear reactor. The engineers envision that such transistors would: 1) Facilitate taking and collecting X-rays in war zones by high-end cellular phones 2) Integrated within equipments to gauge air quality in the actual time 3) Plasma based bot could be sent into the nuclear reactor for certain assignments Like beavers, the transistors perform the most important work in the field of…

Space Based Solar Power: Photovoltaic Satellite System

March 19, 2014 Neha Shukla

Researchers are continually trying to improve the ways to capture solar energy more efficiently for powering industries, towns, remote villages and even for military purposes. Military needs lots of fuel for its operations. In fact, Pentagon oil consumption is one of the largest in the world and with the fuel price rise, the military is searching for other energy options. Therefore, in the United States Naval Research Laboratory, researchers are trying to tap solar energy directly from the space and send it to military base operating in far-flung remote villages.

Graphene Photodetectors Will Now Offer Thermal Vision

March 18, 2014August 7, 2014 Pooja Kashyap

By harvesting the optical capabilities of graphene, researchers at the University of Michigan were able to create infrared contact lens morphed out of the carbon material. Graphene is merely 1-atom thick that makes its absorb nearly 2.3% of light that strikes it, which of course is extremely less especially for generating an electric potential and hence makes it far away from operating as an infrared sensor. Therefore, the researchers devised an innovative technique to resolve this issue. In place of gauging lost electrons by incoming light, they augmented the current…

HyQ: The Most Versatile Quadruped Robot

March 14, 2014June 12, 2014 Pooja Kashyap

With its first launch, HyQ, the brainchild of Italian Institute of Technology had already conquered how to manipulate the terrains. Now the quadruped robot has resurrected but with more tricks than before. Claudio Semini, the lead researcher claimed that the ‘second coming’ of HyQ is sodden with wide variety of motion skills that would help the bot in facing the dynamically changing terrain. Initially, the bot was designed in terms of reactive behavior, the mode that helped it from recovering from huddles but this time, the focus is kept on making…