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German researchers have built an anthropomorphic robot hand that can endure collisions with hard objects and even strikes from a hammer without breaking into pieces. In designing the new hand system, researchers at the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics, part of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), focused on robustness. They may have just built the toughest robot hand yet. The DLR hand has the shape and size of a human hand, with five articulated fingers powered by a web of 38 tendons, each connected to an individual motor on the forearm.

From multicore to many-core to hard-to-describe-in-a-single-word core

Length-match your traces to within 100 mils. Or is it 10 mils? Or should you go down to 1 mil? Should you include the lengths of the vias? How about the lengths of resistors? Understanding the origin of length-matching requirements, coupled with some rudimentary signal integrity analysis, can help answer these questions.   Determining length requirements requires an understanding of flight time, electrical length vs. physical length, loading and signal quality. Those elements are vital in determining what the length really needs to be, as well as in determining the allowable trade-offs to meet system timing goals.

When Pantelis Georgiou and his fellow biomedical engineers at Imperial College London decided to design an intelligent insulin pump for diabetes patients, they started at the source. "We asked ourselves, what does a pancreas do to control blood glucose?" Georgiou recalls. The answer is pretty well known: The organ relies primarily on two populations of cells—beta cells, to secrete insulin when blood glucose is high, and alpha cells, which release a hormone called glucagon when glucose levels are low. "We simulated them both in microchip form," Georgiou says. This biomimetic approach diverges from today's dominant method of delivering only insulin using a relatively simple control system.

In the 1970s the CIA had developed a miniature listening device that needed a delivery system, so the agency’s scientists looked at building a bumblebee to carry it. They found, however, that the bumblebee was erratic in flight, so the idea was scrapped. An amateur entymologist on the project then suggested a dragonfly and a prototype was built that became the first flight of an insect-sized machine. A laser beam steered the dragonfly and a watchmaker on the project crafted a miniature oscillating engine so the wings beat, and the fuel bladder carried liquid propellant. Despite such ingenuity, the project team lost control over the dragonfly in even a gentle wind. “You watch them in nature, they’ll catch a breeze and ride with it. We, of course, needed it to fly to a target. So they were never deployed operationally, but this is a one-of-a-kind piece.”

Tiny microbots swimming through liquid invariably conjures up images of Isaac Asimov's sci-fi classic Fantastic Voyage.But while microbots exist, and they can be made to swim, it's getting them to change direction that has been tricky so far - a bit of an issue if you're even planning on sticking them in a human body, for instance.Now a system used to propel swimming microbots without the need for on-board fuel has brought this idea one step closer. Researchers at North Carolina State University have coaxed their bots to perform U-turns on command.

Until now you can have big elaborate robots or very small microbots but it is very difficult to have both. A blog post from New Scientist (where this video is from) points out the research on microbots, very small machines that will move, navigate and perform simple tasks. The ability to remotely power a microbot, thus eliminating the need for onboard battery or fuel, is already proven and one of the methods is the application of an AC field to a liquid where the robot is located. This microbot is essentially a diode, a one-way electric conductor. The different electric charges at its ends force the neighboring ions to move thus creating a small thrust that propels the bot. The team of Rachita Sharma and Orlin Velev from North Carolina State University developed a method where a controlled application of an additional DC field changes the ion distribution around the microbot and this time the ion field creates a torque that rotates the microbot. The DC field is applied until the completion of a 180-degree turn. Then the microbot moves again, now in the opposite direction. It is only 1.3mm long and as claimed by other scientists like Vesselin Paunov from the University of Hull, UK this arrangement can be further scaled down where it can be useful for diagnostic and localized drug supply applications.

A new form of propulsion that could allow microrobots to explore human bodies has been discovered. The technique would be used to power robots and other devices such as microfluidic pumps from a distance. Finding a propulsion mechanism that works on the microscopic scale is one of the key challenges for developing microrobots. Another is to find a way to supply such a device with energy because there is so little room to carry on-board fuel or batteries. Now a team lead by Orlin Velev at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, US, has found that a simple electronic diode could overcome both these problems. Velev and Vesselin Paunov from the University of Hull, UK, floated a diode in a tank of salt water and zapped the set-up with an alternating electric field.

A new form of propulsion that could allow microrobots to explore human bodies has been discovered. The technique would be used to power robots and other devices such as microfluidic pumps from a distance. Finding a propulsion mechanism that works on the microscopic scale is one of the key challenges for developing microrobots. Another is to find a way to supply such a device with energy because there is so little room to carry on-board fuel or batteries. Now a team lead by Orlin Velev at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, US, has found that a simple electronic diode could overcome both these problems. Velev and Vesselin Paunov from the University of Hull, UK, floated a diode in a tank of salt water and zapped the set-up with an alternating electric field.

Robots might one day trace the origin of their consciousness to recent experiments aimed at instilling them with the ability to reflect on their own thinking. Although granting machines self-awareness might seem more like the stuff of science fiction than science, there are solid practical reasons for doing so, explains roboticist Hod Lipson at Cornell University's Computational Synthesis Laboratory.

There is a long history of attempts at replicating neural systems either in software or in conventional semiconductors, such as the FACETS project (not to mention the creation of conventional logic gates from lab-grown biological neurons!) According to a USC Viterbi news release, researchers at the BioRC project, whose goal is research on an artificial cortex, have succeeded in creating a functioning synapse from carbon nanotubes. The new research was presented by Alice C. Parker in the paper "A biomimetic fabricated carbon nanotube synapse for prosthetic applications" at the Life Science Systems and Applications Workshop in April 2011. (unfortunately the actual paper is behind a paywall but the abstract is readable). An earlier paper, "A Biomimetic Carbon Nanotube Synapse Circuit", describes the proposed design of synapse including schematics and comparison with biological neural

Theodore Berger and his team at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering’s Department of Biomedical Engineering have developed a neural prosthesis for rats that is able to restore their ability to form long-term memories after they had been pharmacologically blocked.In a dramatic demonstration, Berger blocked the ability to rats to form long-term memories by using pharmacological agents to disrupt the neural circuitry that communicates between two subregions of the hippocampus, CA1 and CA3, which interact to create long-term memory, prior research has shown.

Conveniently located right off the B4333 between Blaenannerch and Aberporth (and a short distance from Brynhoffnant, Llangranog, Gwbert, and Mwnt), West Wales Airport has just been officially designated as a UAV testing area by the United Kingdom's Civilian Aviation Authority. This means that you can go out there and test your UAVs over a large area of unrestricted airspace, with civilian and military manned aircraft passing through from time to time that your robot should probably know how not to get run over by. Or vice versa, if you like to think big.

aims at developing swarms of flying robots that can be deployed in disaster areas to rapidly create communication networks for rescuers. Flying robots are interesting for such applications because they are fast, can easily overcome difficult terrain, and benefit from line-of-sight communication.

The Special Project for Earthquake Disaster Mitigation in Urban Areas (2002-2006) conducted by the Earthquake Research Institute at the University of Tokyo. The project revealed the detailed geometry of the subducted Philippine Sea plate (PSP) beneath the Tokyo Metropolitan area and improved information needed for seismic hazards analyses of the largest urban centers. In 2007 the Special Project for Earthquake Disaster Mitigation in Tokyo Metropolitan Area started focusing at  the vertical proximity of the PSP down going lithospheric plate and the risks for the greater Tokyo urban region that has a population of 42 million and is the center of approximately 40 % of the nation's activities. A M 7 or greater (M 7+) earthquake in this region at present has high potential to produce devastating loss of life and property with even greater global economic repercussions. The Central Disaster Management Council of Japan estimated that a great earthquake in the region might cause 11,000 fatalities and 112 trillion yen (1 trillion US$) economic loss. The Earthquake Research Committee of Japan estimated a probability of 70 % in 30 years for a great earthquake in this region. 

F# is ideal for data-rich, concurrent and algorithmic development: "simple code to solve complex problems". F# is a simple and pragmatic programming language combining functional, object-oriented and scripting programming, and supports cross-platform environments including PC, Mac, and Linux. We'll provide the tutorials, resources and tools you’ll need to begin working with F# right away.

With the introduction of the WEBENCH Online Design Environment in 1999, National Semiconductor made it possible for design engineers to create a reliable power supply circuit over the internet in minutes. The user specified the circuit performance and the WEBENCH Toolset delivered. Today, WEBENCH Designer creates and presents all of the possible power, lighting, or sensing circuits that meet a design requirement in seconds. This enables the user to make value based comparisons at a system and supply chain level before a design is committed. This expert analysis is not possible anywhere else.

Instead of calling CrazyFlie (as it's known) a tiny quadcopter, it might be more accurate to just describe it as a PCB that happens to also be able to launch itself into the air. Measuring a scant 10 centimeters per side, CrazyFlie uses its PCB as a primary structural component, which helps keep the size and weight to a minimum... In total, we're talking about only 20 grams. Despite its tinyness, the quadcopter includes a charging port, radio, 3-axis accelerometer, two gyroscopes, and a lightweight 110 mAh LiPO battery that gives it about four and a half minutes of flying time: 

Intel unveiled plans Monday to take supercomputing performance to levels that are orders of magnitude greater than currently possible by the end of the decade. Coincidentally, the news broke just after Japan's K supercomputer had been named the world's fastest, with over three times the processing power as the previous title holder, China's Tianhe-1A system. The power of supercomputers shows no signs of abating. Intel said its new Many Integrated Core (MIC) architecture will deliver exaflop-scale supercomputing by 2018, with the fastest supercomputers reaching up to 4 exaflops of performance by 2020.

Researchers at MIT's Object Based Media Group (OBMG), led by professor Michael Bove, have developed a 3D hologram using the Xbox Kinect and a laptop. Three GPUs on a graphic card are used to generate diffraction patterns that produce a Star-Wars-Style hologram at 15 frames per second. More information is available in a PopSci web article.