A motorless mini-submarine has been created by researchers from ETH Zurich and the California Institute of Technology. The 3D-printed vessel moves using a new propulsion concept designed for swimming robots, enabling it to paddle without engine power.
By responding to temperature changes in water, the robot moves its paddles back and forth, gently — albeit briefly and awkwardly — propelling itself forward.
“Imitating the motion of rowing boats, frogs or water striders, the swimming robot propels itself forward by driving its oars back,” Kristina Shea, an ETH Zurich professor of engineering design who led the project, told Digital Trends.
Rather than relying on an electric motor that connects to a power source, the robot’s oars are activated using a similar mechanism used in snap-on bracelets. This activation is triggered by a “shape memory polymer” strips, which act like muscles.
“A shape memory polymer is a type of plastic that becomes compliant when heated,” Shea explained. “In the heated condition, it can be ‘programmed’ from its permanent shape to a secondary shape. This secondary shape becomes stable when the shape memory polymer is cooled down, yet it does not lose its ‘memory’ of its permanent shape. When it is reheated, it recovers its permanent shape.”
In recovering its permanent shape, force is transferred to an internal mechanism, causing the oars to snap back and drive the robot forward. The shape memory polymer is designed to expand in water, so when the water is heated, they serve as something like muscles for the machine.
The machine is still very primitive, capable of performing just a single paddle stroke and small tasks like dropping a coin. But by demonstrating that this propulsion method is feasible, the researchers hope to develop more complex techniques.
“The main takeaway from our work is that we have developed a new and promising means of propulsion that is fully 3D printed, tune-able, and works without an external power source,” Shea said in a statement.
Among these possible applications, Shea and her team envision similar systems providing low-cost power sources for ocean exploration. In addition to responses to changes in water temperature, these future versions may be sensitive to things like acidity and salinity.
A paper detailing the study was published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Google has been finding more ways to make Gemini a part of your daily routine, from putting together playlists to ordering groceries through your favorite apps. Now it's expanding those capabilities to more services, with Google Search joining in, too.
The company has announced a new Connected Apps Platform that makes it easier for developers to bring their services to both Gemini and Search. Alongside this, Google is adding new partners to its growing lineup, bringing more of the apps people already use into its AI ecosystem.
In the broad context of AI and its perceived harms, health and medical risks often pop up in the conversation. The warnings even come from frontier AI labs, such as ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Anthropic, both of which have warned about misusing AI to cook up bioweapons. Security experts have already spotted a few such incidents in the wild, especially with the usage of AI models without any solid guardrails.
Well, it appears that the risks run deeper. As per an analysis appearing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), AI bots are now being deployed to influence public policies governing health risks to citizens. In this instance, an attempt was made using AI bots to thwart regulations that aim to restrict the sale of disposable vapes, all while disguising the manipulation efforts as a response from real humans.
What if checking your drinking water for dangerous chemicals were as simple as plugging a tiny gadget into your smartphone? Researchers in Japan have developed a compact sensor that could make that possible, potentially bringing sophisticated water contamination testing out of expensive laboratories and into people's hands.
Scientists at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) have created a portable device capable of detecting extremely low concentrations of PFAS, commonly known as "forever chemicals." The findings were published in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics, which demonstrate how an inexpensive sensor and a smartphone could make identifying potentially harmful chemicals in water a lot easier.