Category Technology/Electronics

HyQ2 is a quadruped that has been in high focus at the Italian Institute of Technology’s Dynamic Legged Systems lab. They have been getting it disaster-ready for search and rescue missions and for environment disasters.

This DLS lab makes high-performance, versatile legged robots. Their torque-controlled hydraulic quadruped robot HyQ is their flagship platform. They need to know if the robot can get back on its feet even if it is completely knocked over. The HyQ robot was developed at the IIT in Genoa. The lab works on achieving accurate hydraulic force/ torque control at the joint level. They explore a variety of different locomotion gaits, strong enough to withstand external disturbances and changing environmental conditions.

A significant part of our groups’ effort is devoted to percept...

Fans hail the smooth new velo routes as the answer to urban traffic jams and air pollution, and a way to safely get nine-to-fivers outdoors

It’s every cyclist’s dream: no red lights, no trucks, just a clear, smooth lane to zoom down with the wind in your face. Welcome to Germany’s first bicycle Autobahn. Fans hail the smooth new velo routes as the answer to urban traffic jams and air pollution, and a way to safely get nine-to-fivers outdoors. As a glimpse of a greener urban transport future, Germany has just opened the first 5km stretch of a bicycle highway that is set to span over 100 kilometres.

It will connect 10 western cities including Duisburg, Bochum and Hamm and 4 universities, running largely along disused railroad tracks in the crumbling Ruhr industrial region...

Fountain interferometer. Credit: Nature (2015). DOI: 10.1038/nature16155

Scientists entangling quantum particles and even whole atoms has been in the news a lot over the past couple of years as experiments have been conducted with the goal of attempting to better understand the strange phenomenon—and much has been learned. But, as scientists figure out how to entangle two particles at ever greater distances apart there has come questions about the size of objects that can be entangled. Schrödinger’s cat has come up in several such discussions as theorists and those in the applied fields seek to figure out if it might be truly possible to cause a whole cat to actually be in two places at once...