Arizona State University researchers are using their automation, sensors, biotechnology, and systems expertise to develop Sensorbots – spherical robots equipped with biogeochemical sensors that are affordable enough to be deployed by the hundreds. Sensorbots will be used to monitor the ocean in the National Science Foundation’s Ocean Observatories Initiative named Regional Scale Nodes (RSN) project. ... »

There are numerous examples in nature where ‘active touch’ plays a primary role in how an animal finds its way around and how it behaves. Inspired by the Etruscan shrew, one of the world’s tiniest mammals, researchers at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL) developed Shrewbot – the newest generation of a robots that use sophisticated ... »

Stanford researchers have developed a stretchable, transparent skin-like sensor that can be stretched to more than twice of its original length and return to its original shape. It can sense pressure from a firm pinch to thousands of pounds. The sensor could be used in used in medicine as pressure-sensitive bandages or sensors on prosthetic ... »

Researchers at Technical University of Munich (TUM) are developing an artificial skin for robots to help them navigate in their environments. It will provide important tactile information to the robot and thus supplement its perception formed by camera eyes, infrared scanners and gripping hands. They have built a single robotic arm equipped with sensors to ... »

Unlike other researchers who are developing self-repairing materials, civil engineers at MIT cooperated with physicists at the University of Potsdam, Germany, went in a different direction and developed a flexible skin-like fabric with electrical properties which could be applied to areas of structures where cracks are likely to appear and be used to detect cracks ... »

These days, we normally use sensors to measure whether these components are strained beyond capacity, and it requires a lot of effort to install them into the component parts or glue them onto their surface, and even install networks of sensors with various sensibility. Researchers at Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Applied Material Research ... »

Floods cut down more bridges than fire, wind, earthquakes, deterioration, overloads and collisions combined, costing lives and hundreds of millions of dollars in damage. The speed and turbulence of an overflowing stream scours away the river bottom that provides the support for a bridge foundation. In order to counter that, researchers at the Case Western ... »