Science Daily May 31, 2018 Researchers in France have designed a flying robot called Quad-Morphing which has two rotating arms each equipped with two propellers for helicopter-like flight. A system of elastic and rigid wires allows the robot to change the orientation of its arms in flight so that they are either perpendicular or parallel to its central axis. It adopts the parallel position, halving its wingspan, to traverse a narrow stretch and then switches back to perpendicular position to stabilize its flight, all while flying at a speed of 9 km/h. It paves the way for a new generation […]
Tag Archives: S&T France
Self-propelled mindless tiny robots work together to move a corral
Phys.org May 16, 2018 Researchers in France used assemblies of rodlike robots made motile through self-vibration. When confined in circular arenas, dilute assemblies of these rods act as a gas. Increasing the surface fraction leads to a collective behavior near the boundaries. The coexistence between a gas and surface clusters is a direct consequence of inertial effects as shown by their simulations. By using deformable but free to move arenas the surface induced clusters can lead to directed motion, while the topology of the surface states can be controlled by biasing the motility of the particles… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Nanoporous carbon electrodes harvest blue energy
Nanotechweb May 11, 2018 Capacitive mixing and capacitive deionization are currently developed as alternatives to membrane-based processes to harvest blue energy from salinity gradients between river and sea water and to desalinate water using charge-discharge cycles of capacitors. By simulating realistic capacitors based on aqueous electrolytes and nanoporous carbide-derived carbon electrodes, researchers in France accounted for both their complex structure and their polarization by the electrolyte under applied voltage. They have shown that molecular simulations can realistically predict the capacitance of devices that contain nanoporous carbon materials as the electrodes and salty water as the electrolyte…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL […]