Science Daily January 17, 2023 For detecting a potential collision at night to alert the driver or, maneuvering system of an autonomous vehicle, current technologies utilize resource draining and expensive solutions such as LiDAR or image sensors coupled with extensive software running sophisticated algorithms. In contrast, insects perform the same task of collision detection with frugal neural resources. Researchers at Pennsylvania State University have shown that insect-inspired collision detection algorithms, when implemented in conjunction with in-sensor processing and enabled by innovative optoelectronic integrated circuits based on atomically thin and photosensitive memtransistor technology, can greatly simplify collision detection at night. The […]
Tag Archives: Biomimetics
A step towards solar fuels out of thin air
Science Daily January 4, 2023 Taking inspiration from the way plants can convert sunlight into chemical energy using carbon dioxide from the air, researchers in Switzerland have invented a solar-powered artificial leaf, built on a novel electrode capable of harvesting water from the air for conversion into hydrogen fuel. The system combines semiconductor-based technology and the electrodes that are porous and transparent. When the device was simply exposed to sunlight, it took water from the air and produced hydrogen gas. The coating of various semiconductors on the substrates was established including Fe2O3 (chemical bath deposition), CuSCN and Cu2O (electrodeposition), and […]
Proposing a new idea for spacecraft propulsion that involves dynamic soaring
Phys.org December 6, 2022 Inspired by the dynamic soaring maneuvers performed by sea birds and gliders in which differences in wind speed are exploited to gain velocity, an international team of researchers (Canada, USA – industry) proposed a technique in which a lift-generating spacecraft circles between regions of the heliosphere that have different wind speeds, gaining energy in the process without the use of propellant and only modest onboard power requirements. Detailed models of the spacecraft trajectory were developed to predict the potential velocity gains and the maximum velocity that might be achieved in terms of the lift-to-drag ratio of […]
Microscopic chains that mimic DNA
Phys.org November 29, 2022 DNA conformation is well understood for biological processes. An international team of researchers (Austria, Poland, Italy) focused on chains interlocking the rings and observed their behavior and how they could be used to design innovative materials. They showed that circular polycatenanes have physical and geometrical properties very similar to those of double stranded DNA rings. They demonstrated that the connection of local and global properties holds for these structures too, that is there is a connection between what occurs in a part of the structure and in its whole. The amount of twist of the polycatenanes […]
Penguin feathers may be secret to effective anti-icing technology
Phys.org October 24, 2022 The body feathers of perpetually ice-free penguins are very good natural examples of anti-icing surfaces, which use two different mitigation strategies for the two disparate problems – water adhesion and ice adhesion. Researchers in Canada constructed the form of the feather’s wire-like structure and decorated it with superimposed nanogrooves by laser micromachining fine woven wire cloths. Post-processing techniques also allowed them to isolate the role of surface chemistry by creating both hydrophilic and hydrophobic versions of the synthetic anti-icing surfaces. Their results showed that water-shedding and ice-shedding characteristics are indeed derived from different physical functions of […]
Mussel-inspired dynamic poly(disulfides) ultra-strong underwater adhesives
Phys.org October 18, 2022 Researchers in China have developed a simple and robust strategy that combines natural thioctic acid and mussel-inspired iron-catechol complexes to enable ultra-strong adhesive materials that can be used underwater and simultaneously exhibit unprecedented high adhesion strength on diverse surfaces. Their experimental results showed that the robust crosslinking interaction of the iron-catechol complexes as well as high-density hydrogen bonding were responsible for the ultra-high interfacial adhesion strength. The embedding effect of the hydrophobic solvent-free network of poly(disulfides) further enhanced the water-resistance. The network also made possible the resulting materials reconfigurable, thus enabling multiple reusability via repeated heating […]
Lab grows macroscale, modular materials from bacteria
Nanowerk September 22, 2022 Engineered living materials (ELMs) embed living cells in a biopolymer matrix to create materials with tailored functions. While bottom-up assembly of macroscopic ELMs with a de novo matrix would offer the greatest control over material properties, the ability to genetically encode a protein matrix that leads to collective self-organization is lacking. A team of researchers in the US (Rice University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, UC Berkeley) grew ELMs from Caulobacter crescentus cells that display and secrete a self-interacting protein. This protein formed a de novo matrix and assembled cells into centimeter-scale ELMs. Discovery of design and […]
3D printing drones work like bees to build and repair structures while flying
Science Daily September 21, 2022 An international team of researchers (UK, Germany, USA – University of Pennsylvania, Switzerland) introduced aerial additive manufacturing (Aerial-AM) that utilizes a team of aerial robots inspired by natural builders such as wasps. They developed a scalable multi-robot 3D printing and path-planning framework that enabled robot tasks and population size to be adapted to variations in print geometry throughout a building mission. To validate Aerial-AM they developed BuilDrones for depositing materials during flight and ScanDrones for measuring the print quality and integrated a generic real-time model-predictive-control scheme with the Aerial-AM robots. The manufacturing accuracy was five […]
Researchers help reveal a ‘blueprint’ for photosynthesis
Science Daily September 9, 2022 The cyanobacterial antenna structures, which are called phycobilisomes, are complex collections of pigments and proteins, which assemble into relatively massive complexes. Researchers have been unable to get the high-resolution images of intact antennae needed to understand how they capture and conduct light energy. An international team of researchers (USA – Michigan State University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, UC Berkeley, Czech Republic) documented several notable results, including finding a new phycobilisome protein, observing two new ways that the phycobilisome orients its light-capturing rods that hadn’t been resolved before, and the structure of the antenna is available […]
Floating ‘artificial leaves’ ride the wave of clean fuel production
Nanowerk August 17, 2022 Floating ‘artificial leaves’ that generate clean fuels from sunlight and water could eventually operate on a large scale at sea. Current techniques for depositing photoelectrochemical (PEC) artificial leaves limit their scalability, whereas fragile and heavy bulk materials can affect their transport and deployment. Researchers in the UK fabricated lightweight artificial leaves using lead halide perovskite photocathodes deposited onto indium tin oxide-coated polyethylene terephthalate achieving an activity of 4,266 µmol H2 g−1 h−1 using a platinum catalyst, whereas photocathodes with a molecular Co catalyst for CO2 reduction attained a high CO:H2 selectivity of 7.2 under lower (0.1 sun) irradiation. The corresponding lightweight […]