Category Technology/Electronics

Feeling is believing: Bionic hand ‘knows’ what it’s touching, grasps like a human

Feeling is believing: Bionic hand
The new hybrid robotic hand blends soft and rigid parts with touch-sensitive technology, allowing for precise and flexible object handling. Credit: Sriramana Sankar / Johns Hopkins University

Johns Hopkins University engineers have developed a pioneering prosthetic hand that can grip plush toys, water bottles, and other everyday objects like a human, carefully conforming and adjusting its grasp to avoid damaging or mishandling whatever it holds.

The system’s hybrid design is a first for robotic hands, which have typically been too rigid or too soft to replicate a human’s touch when handling objects of varying textures and materials. The innovation offers a promising solution for people with hand loss and could improve how robotic arms interact with their environment.

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Superconducting quantum processor prototype operates 10¹⁵ times faster than fastest supercomputer

A 105-qubit superconducting quantum processor
Schematic diagram of the Zuchongzhi-3 chip. 105 qubits and 182 couplers are integrated on the same chip to perform quantum random circuit sampling tasks. Credit: USTC


Zuchongzhi-3, a superconducting quantum computing prototype with 105 qubits and 182 couplers, has made significant advancements in random quantum circuit sampling. This prototype was successfully developed by a research team from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC).

This prototype operates at a speed that is 1015 times faster than the fastest supercomputer currently available and one million times faster than the latest results published by Google. This achievement marks a milestone in enhancing the performance of quantum computation, following the success of Zuchongzhi-2...

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How Schrödinger’s cat could help improve quantum computers

Schrödinger's cat
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Quantum computers could be made with fewer overall components, thanks to technology inspired by Schrödinger’s cat. A team of researchers from Amazon Web Services has used “bosonic cat qubits,” to improve the ability of quantum computers to correct errors. The demonstration of quantum error correction requiring reduced hardware overheads is reported in a paper published in Nature.

The system uses so-called cat qubits (qubits are the quantum equivalent to classical computing bits), which are designed to be resistant against certain types of noise and errors that might disrupt the output of quantum systems. This approach requires fewer overall components to achieve quantum error correction than other designs.

Quantum computers are prone to errors, ...

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Magnetic microrobots remove blood clots from sheep iliac artery

Magnetic microrobots remove blood clots from sheep iliac artery
The engagement with the blood clot for volume reduction and revascularization of blood flow is achieved through three methods: mechanical fragmentation using an untethered magnetic robot (UMR), chemical lysis employing fibrinolytics, and a hybrid approach that combines both fragmentation and chemical lysis to mitigate the risk of peripheral emboli or hemolysis. Credit: Applied Physics Reviews (2025). DOI: 10.1063/5.0233677

Researchers at the TechMed Center of the University of Twente and Radboud University Medical Center have removed blood clots with wireless magnetic robots. This innovation promises to transform treatment for life-threatening vascular conditions like thrombosis.

Cardiovascular diseases such as thrombosis are a major global health challenge...

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