Robotics
If you've ever tried to kill an interloping cockroach, you've probably noticed two things: they're fast and nearly invincible. While those features make roaches terrifying to most people, it's a source of bioinspiration for ...
Feb 6, 2018
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Engineering
Nature has produced exquisite composite materials—wood, bone, teeth, and shells, for example—that combine light weight and density with desirable mechanical properties such as stiffness, strength and damage tolerance.
Jan 15, 2018
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239
Engineering
Nature does amazing things with limited design materials. Grass, for example, can support its own weight, resist strong wind loads, and recover after being compressed. The plant's hardiness comes from a combination of its ...
Feb 6, 2017
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694
Engineering
Metamaterials—materials whose function is determined by structure, not composition—have been designed to bend light and sound, transform from soft to stiff, and even dampen seismic waves from earthquakes. But each of ...
Jan 18, 2017
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249
Robotics
Designing a soft robot to move organically—to bend like a finger or twist like a wrist—has always been a process of trial and error. Now, researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied ...
Dec 19, 2016
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Robotics
A team of Harvard University researchers with expertise in 3D printing, mechanical engineering, and microfluidics has demonstrated the first autonomous, untethered, entirely soft robot. This small, 3D-printed robot—nicknamed ...
Aug 24, 2016
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9766
Robotics
Call them the RoboBats. In a recent article in Science, Harvard roboticists demonstrate that their flying microrobots, nicknamed the RoboBees, can now perch during flight to save energy - like bats, birds or butterflies.
May 19, 2016
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436
Engineering
"Flat" and "rigid" are terms typically used to describe electronic devices. But the increasing demand for flexible, wearable electronics, sensors, antennas and biomedical devices has led a team at Harvard's John A. Paulson ...
May 17, 2016
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295
Energy & Green Tech
(Tech Xplore)—Researchers have designed a liquid battery whose catholyte is made of an organic solution, hydroquinone, which is part of the quinone family that can be extracted directly from biomass such as certain plants. ...
Engineering
Imagine a house that could fit in a backpack or a wall that could become a window with the flick of a switch.
Mar 11, 2016
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