Top TechTop Tech #148: Foam Heart, Soft Skin Robots, Re-Encode Memories, Artificial Arteries
Important innovations in science and technology
By Paul Worthington
Thursday’s Top Tech:
• Foam heart pumps
• Disney prints soft skin for robots
• MIT makes soft grippers
• Prosthesis re-encodes memories
• Self-assembling material could lead to artificial arteries
Foam heart pumps
A pumping artificial heart made at Cornell University may perhaps one day keep alive those requiring a replacement.
Researchers there have been making robots out of a solid, porous plastic foam, New Scientist reports, with an interconnected network of tubes to let air flow. They’ve now “constructed a simple model of the human heart” with two chambers “but powering the heart with air makes it flex and pump water between them.”
In the research paper, they report on “fabrication of simple actuators and an entirely soft, functional fluid pump formed in the shape of the human heart. The device pumps at physiologically relevant frequencies and pressures and attains a flow rate higher than all previously reported soft pumps.”
After further development, it has the potential “to be a viable replacement for a heart,” says the leads scientist in the article.
Disney prints soft skin for robots; MIT makes soft grippers
Working on a toy, Disney Research reports it’s developed a robots with soft skin.
The soft skin module has “a built-in airtight cavity in which air pressure can be sensed. A pressure feedback controller is implemented on a robotic system using this module for contact sensing and gentle grasping. The soft skin module is designed to meet size and safety criteria appropriate for a toy-sized interactive robot.”
With a coating produced using a multi-material 3D printer, the robotic system “is capable of very gentle physical interaction with soft objects.”
Here is
the announcement.
Engadget
reports more here.
Meanwhile at MIT,
a new soft robotic gripper uses sensors to estimate the size and shape of an
object accurately enough to identify it from a set of multiple items, PhysOrg
reports.
Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory 3D-printed a robotic hand out of silicone rubber, and it “can lift and handle objects as delicate as an egg and as thin as a compact disc.”
Prosthesis re-encodes memories
A small array of electrodes implanted into the brain can re-encode memories that might otherwise be lost.
Researchers at USC and Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have developed a brain prosthesis that is designed to help individuals suffering from memory loss, the university reports.
“When your brain receives the sensory input, it creates a memory in the form of a complex electrical signal that travels through multiple regions of the hippocampus, the memory center of the brain. At each region, the signal is re-encoded until it reaches the final region as a wholly different signal that is sent off for long-term storage. If there’s damage at any region that prevents this translation, then there is the possibility that long-term memory will not be formed. That’s why an individual with hippocampal damage (for example, due to Alzheimer’s disease) can recall events from a long time ago – things that were already translated into long-term memories before the brain damage occurred – but have difficulty forming new long-term memories.”
The teams here have “found a way to accurately mimic how a memory is translated from short-term memory into long-term memory… Their prosthesis is designed to bypass a damaged hippocampal section and provide the next region with the correctly translated memory.”
Self-assembling material could lead to artificial arteries
A “self-assembling” material that grows and changes shape could lead to artificial arteries, according to the Queen Mary University of London.
Researchers there “have developed a way of assembling organic molecules into complex tubular tissue-like structures without the use of molds or techniques like 3D printing.” Peptides and proteins can be used to create materials that exhibit dynamic behaviors found in biological tissues like growth, morphogenesis, and healing, the report adds. “As the material assembles itself it can be easily guided to grow into complex shapes.”
“This discovery could lead to the engineering of tissues like veins, arteries, or even the blood-brain barrier… with a high level of similarity to the real tissue, which is currently impossible.”
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