MIT Archives | Do It Easy With ScienceProg

The First School of Small Robotic Fish is ready to swim in The Ocean!

The robotic technology has been pushed up to another higher level, when a group of MIT scientists made a school of small, robotic fish using handful of parts and a blend of polymers! It’s one of the most exciting invention for the MIT scientists, as the fish moving and swimming through water like trout and tuna. Kamal Youcef-Toumi and Pablo Vildivia Y Alvarado, both the developers of the robofish described that the new robofish are fully-equipped with sensors, as it uses to monitor the fish’s movement. Another interesting part of the research is they’re the first group to tailor different polymers in different parts of the body with different dampening and stiffness properties. Furthermore, the research group also trying to use the natural motion and behavior of the fish, so that they can replicate the fish’s motions! Believe it or not, the first “Robotuna” version that was created at MIT in 1994 had more than 2,000 parts, including six motors, which is encased in its four-foot body. However, after a several times of renovation and modification, the new Robotuna models have less than 10 parts, including with one motor and the size are between five to eight inches long! It’s…

Will Virus-built Battery Kick-off Li-Ion Battery and Bring It to The End?

After many years of the research, the MIT researchers have finally built a new battery type, which is known as “Virus-built battery”. Virus-built battery is a new form of battery that based on the virus-produced. It has the same energy capacity and power performance as the rechargeable batteries. According to the MIT researchers, they claim that you can use the Virus-built battery to power plug-in hybrid cars and most of the electronic devices too! Angela Belcher, the MIT materials scientist, who is also the leader of the MIT research team pointed out that the Virus-built battery could be manufactured much faster and cheaper than Lithium-ion battery. The synthesis of Virus-built battery can take place at or below room temperature and doesn’t need any harmful organic solvents. As a result, all the materials that being used in the Virus-built battery is safe and non-toxic to human being! Those viruses that contain inside the Virus-built battery are mostly the common bacteriophage. It might have some infection on other bacteria, but it’s totally harmless to users. The research group has a strong believe that the Virus-built battery could be the next new trend of the rechargeable battery. With the invention of the Virus-built…

The Green Concept Pourable Batteries

Nowadays, there are more and more researches of developing smaller, more powerful and more solid batteries. Recently, a group of scientists at MIT is undergoing a research to develop large, eco-friendly stationary batteries, which is made entirely from liquid metal. This type of battery claims can store large amounts of power from wind farms, solar cells, or serve as backup power sources for hospitals and militaries! Some of the special characteristics of this pourable battery are: It has no solid materials inside it; It has no solid electrodes; It has no solid membranes; The conclusion about this pourable battery is it contains nothing solid at all, except it outer case! Then, how can it operate? Well, for your information, the entire anode, cathode and the membrane are in hot and molten liquids form. Those three different combinations of liquid materials that being used here are molten antimony, magnesium and sodium sulfide within the two chemical substances. There is a problem about this pourable battery, where the three layers don’t mix with each other, as each of the material has a different weight. They separate into three layers and if someone is disturbing the battery, they will naturally separate again! However,…

Watch Out For The Artificial Noses!

Every time when you watching the crime scene investigation (CSI) or other criminal series investigation programmes, you will be very familiar with the police officers that dragging those police dogs, which have been trained for several years in sniffing out drugs and explosives weapons to scouring around the suspected revenue. A group of scientists from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) would like to bring some good news to the public, where they have moved a step closer to create a high perception and accuracy “artificial noses” after years of researches in this field. According to the Shuguang Zhang, the associate director of MIT’s Center for Biomedical Engineering, he explained that although they have found a way to mass-produce smell receptors in a laboratory, but they still need to carry on the research to recreate smell, which it’s considering as one of the most complex and least understood of the five senses. The RealNose team will continue to work with researchers from all around the world to develop a portable microfluidic device, where it can be used to identify various smells, including those diseases with distinctive odors, example like diabetes, lung, bladder and skin cancers. [read]

New 6D Holograms Will Shock You Off!

Are you still living in the world, where everything seems to be perfect in the 3 Dimensional? Well, then you must be a very outdated person, as the technology is more advancing than you’re thought here! Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the world of “6D Holograms” and this is far beyond your imagination! Technically, these 6D holograms is a small, 7 x 7 pixels display, and it will respond to changes in light and the viewer’s direction as well! Since it’s still in the early development phase, the researchers expected that in the next two to three years, they could be scaled it up and create some of the most fascinating images! Ramesh Raskar, one of the scientists and researchers at MIT who helped in the development of this project, said that they are the first researcher group that able to build a display that changes with lighting and in the most realistic display.

The Incredible Steel Melting Solar Mirror â€“ Youâ€™re better watch out for your Backyard Trees!

Will you believe it; you actually can vaporize wood and even melt down the steel, by only focusing sunlight with mirrors? It sounds crazy to be true, but a few geniuses MIT students have successfully prove themselves and transform this idea into a reality. The main objective for this project is based on super-efficiency solar energy and environmental friendly concept. The steel-melting solar mirror is a 12-foot by 12-foot parabolic mirror, or you’re also can considered it as a solar concentrator; that is primarily made from the off-the-shelf metal framing which fitted the bent mirrors to enable the sunlight to be focused in a single point.

Tag: MIT