Category Technology/Electronics

Young scientists from Tomsk Polytechnic University are developing a robotic arm prototype and its control algorithm using myoelectric signals

Scientists are developing a robotic arm prototype and its control algorithm using myoelectric signals. The mechanical limb will independently recognize the motions of its owner and be able to perform all the same motions like a healthy arm. The scientists estimate the final cost of the device of 600 –1,000 USD.

According to the developers – fellows at the Laboratory of Medical Instrument-Making, the Institute of Non-Destructive Testing – Mikhail Grigoriev, Nikita Turushev and Evgeniy Tarakanets, the manufacturing of human prosthetic limbs has been available for a few decades...

microscopy technique to measure magnetism at the atomic scale. Credit: ORNL

Scientists can now detect magnetic behavior at the atomic level with a new electron microscopy technique developed by a team from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Lab and Uppsala University, Sweden. They took a counterintuitive approach by taking advantage of optical distortions that they typically try to eliminate.

ORNL’s Juan Carlos Idrobo said: “We will be able to study materials in a new way. Hard drives, for instance, are made by magnetic domains, and those magnetic domains are about 10 nanometers apart.” The researchers plan to refine their technique to collect magnetic signals from individual atoms that are 10X smaller than a nanometer...

Ultra-thin solar cells are flexible enough to bend around small objects, such as the 1mm-thick edge of a glass slide, as shown here. Credit: Juho Kim, et al/ APL

The flexible photovoltaics could power wearable electronics like fitness trackers and smart glasses. “Our photovoltaic is about 1 micrometer thick,” said Jongho Lee, an engineer at the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea. One micrometer is much thinner than an average human hair. Standard photovoltaics are usually hundreds of times thicker, and even most other thin photovoltaics are 2 to 4 times thicker.

They made the ultra-thin solar cells from semiconductor gallium arsenide. They stamped the cells directly onto a flexible substrate without using an adhesive that would add to the material’s thickness...

Stanford engineers created arrays of silicon nanocones to trap sunlight and improve the performance of solar cells made of bismuth vanadate (1μm=1,000 nanometers). Credit: Wei Chen and Yongcai Qiu, Stanford

A Stanford University lab has developed new technologies to tackle 2 of the world’s large energy challenges: clean fuel for transportation and grid-scale energy storage. Although H-cars are emission-free, making hydrogen fuel, however, is not emission free: today, making most H fuel involves natural gas in a process releasing CO2 into the atmosphere.

To address the problem, Cui and his colleagues have focused on photovoltaic water splitting which consists of a solar-powered electrode immersed in water...