Soft Robots Take Cues from Nature
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Who says that robots have to be tall, dark, humanoid and metallic? Certainly not George W. Whitesides and his team at Harvard. They’ve created a whole new set of robots that take their cues from worms and starfish, not Arnie and the Terminator. These soft, flexible and squishy ‘bots can do all manner of interesting maneuvers. The hope is that they will be able to go where few other kinds of robots can. In this week’s tech podcast, you’ll hear Professor Whitesides talk about the advantages these robots have. We can’t resist giving you this video sampler as well:
There’s also this:
Also in the podcast this week, we’ll hear about two compounds that have been very much in use, and in the news, both in the United States and elsewhere: pepper spray and tear gas. One of the inventors of modern pepper spray tells us why he’s now speaking out about its use. We’ll also hear from an expert on tear gas.
We also will tell you about some research on the development of a new kind of contact lens – one that might be able to actually project your email right in front of your eyeballs. And we’ll end with a check-in one of WTP’s favorite stories, Bletchley Park in the UK. Anchor Marco Werman speaks with Sue Black, who is fighting to save the building and the grounds where British code-breakers cracked German codes during World War II. Truly, tech that still matters.
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This entry was posted on Friday, December 2nd, 2011 at 9:17 AM and is filed under Technology Podcast. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
