This robot has only mechanical parts, which have been designed to mimic the lower limbs of a human in both form and function. It has thighs, shins and ankles, and it tips the scale around the weight of an average human. It was designed at Nagoya Institute of Technology’s Sano Lab, which put it through some impressive paces in a walking test — it set a Guinness World Record by walking continuously for 13 hours, taking 100,000 steps and covering 15 kilometers, according to the video news site DigInfo.
This type of forward falling motion is not exactly a new concept — when I was your age, I had a Slinky, too — but it’s an interesting reminder that robotic technology doesn’t necessarily need tons of servos and articulated limbs to accomplish a complex task. Three simple joints are enough to keep the robot moving almost perpetually, as long as it has a slight downward grade on which to walk. There are no computer chips or electronics at all, other than those on the treadmill.
The designers envision deploying the robot’s walking strategy in sporting equipment, according to DigInfo. We can also imagine it doing quite well in games of robotic endurance, in which competitive bots walk a marathon and kick soccer balls around. The design might also someday be used as a prosthetic device or artificial legs. Check it out:
You probably saw that super viral quantum locking levitation video that bounced all over the Web last week (though technically it’s been around since summer) in which a team of researchers plays with some liquid nitrogen, a small superconducting disc, and some strange quantum phenomenon that makes the disc hover above a magnet, no strings attached. This week’s levitation vid taps a similar phenomenon known as the Meisnner effect to achieve this kind of levitation at a decidedly cooler scale: that of the hoverboard.
MagSurf, build by researchers at Universite Paris Diderot in France, flips the strange world of the quantum into a more sci-fi application, essentially turning a skateboard like platform into one big magnetic superconductor. Using liquid nitrogen, the team turn the platform super-cold, creating an electromagnetic field that is expelled from the inside of the board. It’s not quantum locking--the skateboard is too big to mimic that little super-cooled disc--but it provides enough outward magnetic force to float above a rail of permanent magnets.
It’s sort of like a Maglev train, and sort of not. But, says SmartPlanet, one group of researchers in Japan is reportedly working on scaling exactly this kind of technology into better levitating train tech. That sounds somewhat difficult, given the extremely low temperatures needed to make this kind of thing work. For your enjoyment, the quantum locking video--which is really cool if you haven’t seen it--is below.
