Important Innovations

Harvard Robot to Do Surgery It's a tiny, soft robot, inspired by spiders, that may operate on humans someday.  Harvard and Boston University engineers and scientists developed it.  Their goal is to enable the robot to get to areas inside the human body that surgeons can't reach. This is the 1st time a flexible soft robot with an extensive range of capabilities has been created on such a small scale.  The process is called MORPH. Robots One Millimeter in Size Boston University and Harvard's Wyss Institute have developed a process to create millimeter-sized, flexible robots.  It's a hybrid technology that merges 3 different fabrication techniques.  With the process, the team created a soft robot spider made of silicone rubber.  It has 18 degrees of "freedom", meaning changes in structure, motion and color.  These devices are at the micrometer scale level, meaning they can operate in small, inaccessible places. Many Applications The soft robotic...

New Alloy Enables Wearable Computing and Soft Robots Researchers at Oregon State University have developed a unique alloy that can be used for 3D printing of soft robots, stretchable electronics and wearable computing.  It also paves the way for 3D printing of tall, complicated structures. New, 3D Printable Material that's Self-Healing They put nickel nanoparticles into the liquid metal Galinstan which gave it a consistency perfect for 3D printing.  The new material has awesome properties:  good conductivity, low toxicity, inexpensive and self-healing.  It can attach back together at break points. Vision of Soft Robots Walking Out of Printers Liquid metal printing is integral to the flexible electronics field.  The properties contained in this new material enable the creation of a range of emerging technologies such as wearable sensor suits, electrically conductive textiles, wearable computers and soft robots.  In fact, the researchers say they're...