Tag Archives: smart materials

For quite some time the focus of researchers working on creating an artificial hand/limb has been on functionality, and rightly so. How can we create an artificial hand that can be controlled by the person’s brain via the stump? Researchers have discovered that the brain of a person with an …

17. Brain Computer Interfaces The connection of our brain to a computer was in a way imprinted in the name that many gave to the earlier ideas of computers: “Electronic Brains”. If they are both “brains” it makes sense to look for a connection among them: easier said than done. …

If you open the hood of your car you’ll see, among many other parts, the battery. Take an electric car and you’ll see plenty of batteries. Researchers and engineers have been at work for a while to remove those batteries and embedding them into the car’s chassis and the bodywork …

Harnessing the Fourth Industrial Revolution We are already in the path of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the one characterised by a merging of the physical, digital and -at least for some- biological world. Personally I tend to limit the characterisation to the merging of physical and digital leaving the merging …

We have already moved quite a long way from Henry Ford’s famous statement: “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.” He didn’t actually wanted to limit customer’s choice, he wanted to produce a car that could be affordable for (mostly) …

The early success of personal computers among hobbyists was driven by actuators that converted bits into sound or light. At industrial level the conversion of bits into printouts and into commands operating a lathe or other tools was the reason for their adoption. Actually, it is this conversion of bit/data …

The advance in smart material technologies includes the capability of self replication. Studies in this area started in the last decade and exploited the results of Nature: using DNA strings with attached molecules of materials scientists demonstrated the possibility of replication (see the image). Of course the replication instructions to …

In the last ten years there have been several researches focussing on the creation of a sensory system for robots that could be as effective as the one of animals. Animals have a variety of sensorial capabilities, varying in different species. Most species (probably all) have touch sensors embedded in …

I have a digital reflex camera and it is a bulky one. It gets even bulkier when I decide to use a telephoto lens. The reasons are related to the physics of optics. The “bulkiness” of the lens depends on the size of the sensor you have and on the …

Several dictionaries do not list the word “blacker” because black is supposed to be an “absolute” state, you cannot get something that is more black than black. A week ago I reported on the use of Vantablack by BMW to paint their X6 model and showcase it at the Frankfurt …