Category Physics

Researchers have trained a robotic ‘chef’ to watch and learn from cooking videos, and recreate the dish itself.

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, programmed their robotic chef with a ‘cookbook’ of eight simple salad recipes. After watching a video of a human demonstrating one of the recipes, the robot was able to identify which recipe was being prepared and make it.

In addition, the videos helped the robot incrementally add to its cookbook. At the end of the experiment, the robot came up with a ninth recipe on its own. Their results, reported in the journal IEEE Access, demonstrate how video content can be a valuable and rich source of data for automated food production, and could enable easier and cheaper deployment of robot chefs.

Robotic chefs have been fe...

Scientists have identified a method for improving the thermal conductivity of thin metal films in semiconductors using surface waves for the first time in the world.

The demand to shrink the size of semiconductors coupled with the problem of the heat generated at the hot spots of the devices not being effectively dispersed has negatively affected the reliability and durability of modern devices. Existing thermal management technologies have not been up to the task...

Recent advancements in the field of electronics have enabled the creation of smaller and increasingly sophisticated devices, including wearable technologies, biosensors, medical implants, and soft robots. Most of these technologies are based on stretchy materials with electronic properties.

While material scientists have already introduced a wide range of flexible materials that could be used to create electronics, many of these materials are fragile and can be easily damaged...

A team of researchers in the Penn State School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science aims to enable health care and extended reality—which encompasses virtual, augmented and mixed reality—with their smart sensing ring, OmniRing.

The ring uses both inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensors, which can capture location, speed and rotation of the fingers, and photoplethysmography (PPG) sensors, which utilize an infrared light to measure volumetric changes in blood circulation...