Bicycles

Awesome wall-climbing robots, including a “snail”

Roboticists at Israel’s Ben Gurion University, led by Dr. Amir Shapiro, have posted a cool video on YouTube showing four of their wall-climbing bot designs in action:

First, a magnetic climber that has compliant magnetic wheels and is capable to climb on ferromagnetic surfaces. This robot can be used for inspection of ship hull or bridges. Second, is a Snail inspired wall climbing robot capable of climbing on non metallic surfaces using hot melt glue. The robot secretes the adhesive at the front and peels off the track from the wall at the bottom leaving a trail behind just like the snail does. Third, is a robot that uses sticky wheels in order to attach itself to the wall. It simply has 3Ms sticky tape on the wheels. It can climb on smooth surfaces like glass. Fourth, is a four legged wall climbing robot for climbing on rough surfaces. It has 12 claws made of fishing hooks mounted on each footpad, and it climbs like cat or other rodents.

I think the second bot, the “snail” one, is my favorite. It starts around 0:30. [via Bot Junkie]

Continue Reading Sean Michael Ragan
Real-life “landspeeder” prototype

Real-life “landspeeder” prototype

Noah Shactman just brought Israeli defense contractor Urban Aeronautics’ AirMule VTOL UAV project to my attention. The photo released by Urban Aeronautics, shown above, purports to show the first successful hovering flight of an AirMule prototype, secured against wandering off by guy-wires. Video would’ve been more persuasive. The design goal of the AirMule project is to produce an unmanned vehicle that can be used to ferry supplies into, or wounder soldiers out of, a hostile, closely-packed urban combat environment. [via Danger Room]

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Make paper conductive using simple carbon nanotube ink

Make paper conductive using simple carbon nanotube ink

Ordinary copy paper can be made highly conductive by treating it with a simple water-based dispersion of carbon nanotubes. Bing Hu and other graduate students under Stanford researcher Yi Cui published a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) describing the use of such conductive paper to create high-performing prototype supercapacitors, batteries, and fuel cells. He also studied the wear resistance of the nanotube ink and found that it bonds very tightly to the paper; his data show that soaking, rinsing, and wringing-out in water does not significantly affect the properties of the treated paper. The supplementary information for his PNAS paper is freely available for download and describes his experimental methods in detail, including the recipe for his ink and the trick of reloading a commercial highlighter with it. [via Science Daily]

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Researchers create golden aluminum, black platinum, blue silver

Researchers create golden aluminum, black platinum, blue silver

University of Rochester Associate Processor Chunlei Guo has developed a technique that uses a femtosecond laser to blast nanoscale features into the surface of a piece of metal–pretty much any metal. These tiny features interact selectively with white light to reflect a particular color–pretty much any color. It’s also possible to achieve a near-perfect black finish and iridescence. If the process can be made economical (it’s very slow at present, requiring about half an hour to treat a dime-sized area), it could be a complete game-changer when it comes to finishing metals. Guo gives the example of a bicycle factory that could use only a single laser to make parts of any color or color scheme.

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