Mar 01, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Imagine a world with precision medicine, where a swarm of microrobots delivers a payload of medicine directly to ailing cells. Or one where aerial or marine drones can collectively survey an area while exchanging minimal information about their location. One early step towards realizing such...
A new bioinspired earthworm robot for future underground explorations
Mar 01, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Researchers at Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT-Italian Institute of Technology) in Genoa has realized a new soft robot inspired by the biology of earthworms,which is able to crawl thanks to soft actuators that elongate or squeeze, when air passes through them or is drawn out....
Researchers create metasurface that enables multichannel terahertz transmission
Mar 01, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Researchers have designed and demonstrated two all-silicon terahertz metasurface devices that can be used to create four optical channels for simultaneously implementing different optical functions. This capability could be useful for a variety of applications such as communication, terahertz imaging, particle manipulation or encoding quantum...
Quantum chemistry: Molecules caught tunneling
Mar 01, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Quantum effects can play an important role in chemical reactions. Physicists led by Roland Wester of the University of Innsbruck, Austria, have now for the first time observed a quantum mechanical tunneling reaction in experiments. The observation can also be described exactly in theory. With...
Strain-invariant and elastic material for soft conductors (w/video)
Mar 01, 2023 (Nanowerk News) Classical robots, such as those used for manufacturing, can lift heavy loads and repeat automated processes precisely. But they are too rigid and bulky for delicate work and interaction with humans. The research field of soft robotics works on the development of robots made of...
Spiral pattern gives clue to how high-mass stars form
Feb 28, 2023 (Nanowerk News) New observations have revealed a spiral pattern in a disk of material around a still forming, but already high-mass, baby star. This indicates that there is gravitational instability in the disk, which has important implications for how high-mass stars form (Nature Astronomy, "A Keplerian disk...