While so many of us are working at home during the coronavirus pandemic, we do worry that serendipitous hallway conversations aren’t happening.
Last year, before the pandemic, it was one of those conversations that led researchers atETH Zurichto develop a way of making chocolates shimmer with color—without any coloring agents or other additives.
Gif: Giulia Marthaler/ETH Zurich
The project,announced in December, involves what the scientists call “structural color”. The team indicated that it creates colors in a way similar to what a chameleon does—that is, using the structure of its skin to scatter a particular wavelength of light. The researchers have yet to release details, but Alissa M. Fitzgerald, founder of MEMS product development firm AMFitzgerald, has a pretty good guess.
She explains that Iridescence in nature (like that inside oyster shells and on the wings of butterflies) involves nanoscale patterns in the form of lines, plates, or holes. To make iridescent chocolate, she surmises, the researchers likely created a nanotech chocolate mold, using e-beam lithography to etch lines of about 100 nm wide on a glass or silicon wafer.
The ETH researchers hope to get their technique for coloring chocolate out of the lab and into the mass market. Meanwhile, during the pandemic shutdown, some tech professionals have been playing with rainbow chocolates of their own, like software engineer and startup founderSamy Kamkar, recently profiled inthe New York Times. (You can only bake so much bread, after all.)
Chocolate is only the beginning for nanocolors, Fitzgerald says: “The combination of nano- and micro-technology fabrication techniques with atypical materials like food, fabric, paper and plastic is going to lead to some really exciting new products as well as improve or enhance existing products. For example,Teijin Fiber Japanuses structural color methods to make “Morphotex” fabric, named after the iridescent Morpho butterfly, recently demonstrated in the conceptMorphotex Dress. Everyday objects are poised to benefit from advances in nanotechnology.”
from IEEE Spectrum Recent Content full text https://ift.tt/2BzEEXf
https://ift.tt/eA8V8J
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We’ll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here’s what we have so far (send us your events!):
This video shows some cool musical experiments with Pepper. They should definitely release this karaoke feature to Peppers everywhere—with “Rage Against the Machine” songs included, of course. NSFW warning: There is some swearing by both robot and humans, so headphones recommended if you’re at work.
It all started when on a whim David and another team member fed a karaoke file into Pepper’s text to speech, with a quick Python script, and playing some music in parallel from their PC. The effect was a bit strange, but there was something so fun (and funny) to it. I think they were going for a virtual performance from Pepper or something, but someone noted that it sounds like he’s struggling like someone doing karaoke. And from there it grew into doing duets with Pepper.
This thing might seem ridiculous, and it is. But believe me, it’s genuinely fun. It was going all night in a meeting room at the office winter party.
In “Scary Beauty,” a performance conceived and directed by Tokyo-based musician Keiichiro Shibuya, a humanoid robot called Alter 3 not only conducts a human orchestra but also sings along with it.
Unlike the previous two "Alters", the Alter 3 has improved sensory and expression capabilities closer to humans, such as a camera with both eyes and the ability to utter from the mouth, as well as expressiveness around the mouth for singing. In addition, the output was enhanced compared to the alternator 2, which made it possible to improve the immediacy of the body expression and achieve dynamic movement. In addition, portability, which allows anyone to disassemble and assemble and transport by air, is one of the evolutions of the Altera 3.
Carnegie Mellon University’s Henny Admoni studies human behavior in order to program robots to better anticipate people’s needs. Admoni’s research focuses on using assistive robots to address different impairments and aid people in living more fulfilling lives.
Olympia was produced as part of a two-year project exploring the growth of social and humanoid robotics in the UK and beyond. Olympia was shot on location at Bristol Robotics Labs, one of the largest of its kind in Britain.
Humanoid robotics - one the most complex and often provocative areas of artificial intelligence - form the central subject of this short film. At what point are we willing to believe that we might form a real bond with a machine?
In this work, we explore user preferences for different modes of autonomy for robot-assisted feeding given perceived error risks and also analyze the effect of input modalities on technology acceptance.
This video brings to you a work conducted on a multi-agent system of aerial robots to form mid-air structures by docking using position-based visual servoing of the aerial robot. For the demonstration, the commercially available drone DJI Tello has been modified to fit to use and has been commanded using the DJI Tello Python SDK.
The video present DLR CLASH (Compliant Low-cost Antagonistic Servo Hand) developed within the EU-Project Soma (grant number H2020-ICT-645599) and shows the hand resilience tests and the capability of the hand to grasp objects under different motor and sensor failures.
With support from the National Science Foundation, electrical engineer Yan Wan and a team at the University of Texas at Arlington are developing a new generation of "networked" unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to bring long distance, broadband communications capability to first responders in the field.
Drones and UAVs are vulnerable to hackers that might try to take control of the craft or access data stored on-board. Researchers at the University of Michigan are part of a team building a suite of software to keep drones secure.
The suite is called Trusted and Resilient Mission Operations (TRMO). The U-M team, led by Wes Weimer, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, is focused on integrating the different applications into a holistic system that can prevent and combat attacks in real time.
A mobile robot that revs up industrial production: SOTO enables efficient automated line feeding, for example in the automotive industry. The supply chain robot SOTO brings materials to the assembly line, just-in-time and completely autonomous.
Ready-to-connect cables from igus® are expertly assembled, extensively tested and designed to last
Our engineers run 2 billion different bend tests to ensure cables designed for specific types of movement have the strength and durability to maintain their structure over millions of linear, tick-tock, torsional or multi-axis cycles.
from IEEE Spectrum Recent Content full text http://bit.ly/2HJk5I8
https://ift.tt/eA8V8J
This discussion will bring clarity and alternatives to ensure your product is ready for market and discuss methods to manage this business risk.
Do you know you know, or think you know?
How can the leader of the business know that the new or revamped product or service is really good to go? This is what leadership frets about, worries about and works to answer every day. After all, their reputation and financial success depends on it. Every company, organization, club and home has their own special way of making this happen.
Mr. Thompson will focus on a simple question today, "Do you know you know or think you know?". Some folks refer to this concept as Risk Analysis, Regulatory Compliance, Robustness or simple meeting product launch timelines. Robust Design today is hard because of rapid technology expansion, pressure to rent outside designers to control costs and the rapid mobilization of workforce's that limit "tribal knowledge". Today's discussion will bring clarity and alternatives to this problem and methods to manage this business risk.
PRESENTER:
Chris Thompson, Principal Consultant, Intertek
Chris Thompson has 30 years of professional experience in the areas of global research, design, implementation, and regulatory strategy for products and systems across the range of consumer and commercial appliances, HVACR, energy management, and control methodologies. His skills include robust design through FMEA, product hazard management, incident recreation, forced failure evaluation, product design for mass commercialization, specification rationalization, and contract manufacturer / licensing product robustness.
Mr. Thompson brings his knowledge of successfully walking the path of an innovator, designer, and manufacturer for many decades to each client’s project.
Attendees of this IEEE Spectrum webinar have the opportunity to earn PDHs or Continuing Education Certificates! To request your certificate you will need to get a code. Once you have registered and viewed the webinar send a request to webinarteam@ieeeglobalspec.com for a webinar code. To request your certificate complete the form here: https://innovationatwork.ieee.org/spectrum/
Attendance is free. To access the event please register.
NOTE: By registering for this webinar you understand and agree that IEEE Spectrum will share your contact information with the sponsors of this webinar and that both IEEE Spectrum and the sponsors may send email communications to you in the future.
from IEEE Spectrum Recent Content full text http://bit.ly/2FJcSYK
https://ift.tt/eA8V8J
