The researchers, from the University of Science and Technology of China, hope that the technique – which uses liquid metal to mimic natural muscle movements — could also help to administer drugs inside the body and underwater drones.
Researchers created an artificial muscle using liquid metal that allows it to expand and contract and hope one day to use the technology to help humans.
MASK Architects has designed the world’s first steel 3D printed structure of modular houses for Nivola Museum’s visitors, Tourists and Artists in Orani, city of Sardinia. Öznur Pınar Cer and Danilo Petta have Inspired from the work of “Costantino Nivola”, they have designed “Exosteel Mother Nature” modular houses which they have taken inspiration from him sculpture called the “La Madre”.
The studio is the first architecture and design studio in the world to use a steel 3D-printed “exoskeleton” construction system that supports and distributes all the functional elements of the building, using their new solution of construction technique which they called “EXOSTEEL”.
The house is composed firstly by a hollow central column inserted for one / third of its length into the ground and by various organic branches that support the three floors of the building. On each floor a perimeter frame divides and supports the facades made up of panels modeled to follow the organic shape of the house.
Imagine a time where humans have set foot on most of the planets in the galaxy, with even more to explore. This exoskeleton spacesuit coincides with that ultimate dream and our unstoppable quest for space exploration!
Venturing beyond the realms of planet earth comes with its unique set of challenges. The effects of gravity being on top of the list. NASA has put a lot of time and effort into developing new-age spacesuits to counter the effects of gravity in hostile environments. 14 years to be exact, and it has cost them a whopping $420 million already. The space agency is expected to churn out another $625 million in time for the next moon mission which was earlier planned for the year 2024.
Artificial intelligence (AI) could be the most transformative technology in the history of mankind—and we may not even see much of this sweeping change coming. That’s because we often overestimate what technologies can do in five years, and underestimate what they will be able to do in 20.
As I’ve traveled the world talking about this subject, I’m constantly asked, “what will the future hold for humans and AI?” This is an essential question for this moment in history. Some believe that we’re in the midst of an “AI bubble” that will eventually pop, or at least cool off. Those with more drastic and dystopian views believe everything from the notion that AI giants will “hijack our minds” and form a utopian new race of “human cyborgs”, to the arrival of an AI-driven apocalypse. Each of these projections may be born out of genuine curiosity or understandable fear, but they are usually speculative or exaggerated. They miss the complete picture.
Speculation varies wildly because AI appears complex and opaque and it is no wonder that the general view about AI has turned cautious—and even negative. To be sure, aspects of AI development deserve our scrutiny and caution, but it is important to balance these concerns with exposure to the full picture of this crucially important technology’s potential. AI, like most technologies, is inherently neither good nor evil. And I believe that, like most technologies, AI will eventually produce more positive than negative impacts in our society.
Our reign as sole understanders of the cosmos is rapidly coming to an end. We should not be afraid of this. The revolution that has just begun may be understood as a continuation of the process whereby the Earth nurtures the understanders, the beings that will lead the cosmos to self-knowledge. What is revolutionary about this moment is that the understanders of the future will not be humans but cyborgs that will have designed and built themselves from the artificial intelligence systems we have already constructed. These will soon become thousands then millions of times more intelligent than us.
SEOUL, Sept 9 (Reuters) — South Korean researchers say they have developed an artificial skin-like material, inspired by natural biology, that can quickly adjust its hues like a chameleon to match its surroundings.
The team, led by Ko Seung-hwan, a mechanical engineering professor at Seoul National University, created the “skin” with a special ink that changes colour based on temperature and is controlled by tiny, flexible heaters.
“If you wear woodland camouflage uniforms in desert, you can be easily exposed,” Ko told Reuters. “Changing colours and patterns actively in accordance with surroundings is key to the camouflage technology that we created.”
The test was meant to simulate the impacts of being on a speed boat during high seas, an experience that can involve a ton of harsh G forces.
The device has its limits, however, particularly when it’s not used for its intended purpose. While technologically impressive, the Forge brace didn’t allow Rose to dunk a basketball, as he found out to his dismay.
“I was wrong to believe that I could fly and I feel stupid now,” a disappointed Rose said in the video.
Robotic exoskeletons have captivated us for years. They are major tropes in sci-fi movies and video games, and in real-life engineers have been working on them since the 1900s. San Francisco’s Roam Robotics has entered into this space, and Brent Rose tries his hand at stress testing their latest military leg brace.
Archival footage of GE robotic exoskeleton courtesy of miSci: Museum of Innovation & Science.
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Why do so many people get frustrated with their “high-tech” prostheses? Though sophisticated robotics allow for prosthetic joints that can do everything a human can and more, the way we control robotic machines right now doesn’t allow us to operate them as naturally as you would a biological hand. Most robotic prostheses are controlled via metal pads on the skin that indirectly measure muscle action and then make some assumptions to determine what the person wants to do. Whil… See More.
We plan to use MM to provide natural control over prosthetic limbs by leveraging the human body’s proprioception. When you wiggle one of your fingers, your brain senses muscle lengths, speeds, and forces, and it uses these to figure out the position of that finger. This is called body awareness, or proprioception. When someone receives an amputation, if their muscle connections are maintained with what is called the “AMI technique,” their brain still perceives muscle flexion as it relates to joint movement, as if their limb was still present. In other words, they are sensing movement of a phantom limb. To give an amputee intuitive control over a robotic prosthesis, we plan to directly measure the muscle lengths and speeds involved in this phantom limb experience and have the robot copy what the brain expects, so that the brain experiences awareness of the robot’s current state. We see this technique as an important next step in the embodiment of the prosthetic limb (the feeling that it is truly part of one’s body).
Notably, the tracking of magnetic beads is minimally invasive, not requiring wires to run through the skin boundary or electronics to be implanted inside the body, and these magnetic beads can be made safe to implant by coating them in a biocompatible material. In addition, for muscles that are close to the skin, MM can be performed with very high accuracy. We found that by increasing the number of compass sensors we used, we could track live muscle lengths close to the surface of the skin with better than millimeter accuracy, and we found that our measurements were consistent to within the width of a human hair (about 37 thousandths of a millimeter).
The concept of tracking magnets through human tissue is not a new concept. This is the first time, however, that magnets have been tracked at sufficiently high speed for intuitive, reflexive control of a prosthesis. To reach this sufficiently high tracking speed, we had to improve upon traditional magnet tracking algorithms; these improvements are outlined in our previous work on tracking multiple magnets with low time delay, which also describes how we can account for the earth’s magnetic field during portable muscle-length tracking. This is also the first time that a pair of magnets has been used as a distance sensor. MM extends the capabilities we currently have with wired-ultrasound-crystal distance sensing (sonomicrometry, SM) and tantalum-bead-based distance sensing via multiple-perspective X-ray video (fluoromicrometry, FM), enabling us to now wirelessly sense distances in the body while a person moves about in a natural environment.