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Cornell engineers have developed a robotic collective that behaves less like a machine and more like a material that flows, reshapes, and adapts to its environment without centralized control. The system, called the Cross-Link Collective, consists of dozens of small robots that have limited mobility individually, but together exhibit...

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73,707 views • 1 month ago •via X (Twitter)

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E pluribus unum – “out of many, one” – is not only a motto for the United States. It’s a good credo for microrobots. A research collaboration between Cornell and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems has shown how a swarm of microrobots spinning on a water surface can together generate the fluidic torque needed to manipulate passive structures without any physical contact. This collective behavior was demonstrated to operate gears and move objects, with the aim of eventually performing microscale tasks and biomedical procedures. “At small scales, contact-based manipulation can be limiting, and flow-based manipulation offers a great alternative,” said Kirstin Petersen, associate professor and an Aref and Manon Lahham Faculty Fellow in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in Cornell Duffield College of Engineering and the paper’s co-senior author. “We’re showing that in spite of their size, adding more microrobots creates stronger flows and greater torque transfer.” The research published Feb. 25 in Science Advances. The lead author is Steven Ceron, Ph.D. ’22, now an assistant professor at the University of Michigan. More:
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E pluribus unum – “out of many, one” – is not only a motto for the United States. It’s a good credo for microrobots. A research collaboration between Cornell and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems has shown how a swarm of microrobots spinning on a water surface can together generate the fluidic torque needed to manipulate passive structures without any physical contact. This collective behavior was demonstrated to operate gears and move objects, with the aim of eventually performing microscale tasks and biomedical procedures. “At small scales, contact-based manipulation can be limiting, and flow-based manipulation offers a great alternative,” said Kirstin Petersen, associate professor and an Aref and Manon Lahham Faculty Fellow in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in Cornell Duffield College of Engineering and the paper’s co-senior author. “We’re showing that in spite of their size, adding more microrobots creates stronger flows and greater torque transfer.” The research published Feb. 25 in Science Advances. The lead author is Steven Ceron, Ph.D. ’22, now an assistant professor at the University of Michigan. More:

Cornell University

52,044 views • 4 months ago

Scientists at Cornell University have developed a “biohybrid” robot that moves in response to signals from the nervous system of fungi. These robots incorporate mycelium, the root system of fungi, which senses and communicates through electrical signals. Researchers grew mycelium directly into the robot's electronics, allowing it to drive the machine by processing these natural signals. The team built two versions: one with wheels and another spider-shaped with soft legs. Both versions respond to light and other stimuli, with the mycelium sending signals to the robot's actuators to initiate movement. Experiments demonstrated the robots' ability to move based on natural mycelium signals, react to ultraviolet light, and even allow manual override. Future developments may include multiple inputs like chemical signatures, enhancing the robot's ability to autonomously interact with its environment. Credit: Cornell University #engineering
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Scientists at Cornell University have developed a “biohybrid” robot that moves in response to signals from the nervous system of fungi. These robots incorporate mycelium, the root system of fungi, which senses and communicates through electrical signals. Researchers grew mycelium directly into the robot's electronics, allowing it to drive the machine by processing these natural signals. The team built two versions: one with wheels and another spider-shaped with soft legs. Both versions respond to light and other stimuli, with the mycelium sending signals to the robot's actuators to initiate movement. Experiments demonstrated the robots' ability to move based on natural mycelium signals, react to ultraviolet light, and even allow manual override. Future developments may include multiple inputs like chemical signatures, enhancing the robot's ability to autonomously interact with its environment. Credit: Cornell University #engineering

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Each weaver ant can pull on a leaf much harder when in a group than when it works alone. The ants’ sticky feet and coordinated legwork, researchers believe, improve the ants’ collective efficiency—a finding that may provide insights into how to build and coordinate swarms of robots that work together. Learn more: News from Science
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Each weaver ant can pull on a leaf much harder when in a group than when it works alone. The ants’ sticky feet and coordinated legwork, researchers believe, improve the ants’ collective efficiency—a finding that may provide insights into how to build and coordinate swarms of robots that work together. Learn more: News from Science

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Researchers have developed a #DeepLearning system called BioEmu that rapidly generates diverse protein conformations, enabling fast, accurate insights into protein flexibility and function. Learn more this week in Science:
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Researchers have developed a #DeepLearning system called BioEmu that rapidly generates diverse protein conformations, enabling fast, accurate insights into protein flexibility and function. Learn more this week in Science:

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196,943 views • 2 years ago

🚨 SCIENTISTS JUST CREATED A “LIVING” METAMATERIAL THAT CAN SELF-HEAL AND CHANGE ITS PROPERTIES IN REAL TIME. Researchers have developed a metamaterial made from living cells that can adapt its structure, heal itself when damaged, and even change its physical properties on demand. This is the first true bio-hybrid material with dynamic, life-like behavior. Why this matters: • Traditional metamaterials are static once made, they don’t change • This new material can respond to its environment and repair itself • It opens the door to self-healing buildings, adaptive medical implants, and living machines • It blurs the line between biology and engineering The deeper implication is enormous: We are entering the age of living materials objects that are not just built, but grown and evolved. The future of technology may not be made of metal and plastic… but of living, breathing, self-repairing matter. What would you build first with a material that can heal itself and adapt? Follow for more frontier physics and future technology.
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🚨 SCIENTISTS JUST CREATED A “LIVING” METAMATERIAL THAT CAN SELF-HEAL AND CHANGE ITS PROPERTIES IN REAL TIME. Researchers have developed a metamaterial made from living cells that can adapt its structure, heal itself when damaged, and even change its physical properties on demand. This is the first true bio-hybrid material with dynamic, life-like behavior. Why this matters: • Traditional metamaterials are static once made, they don’t change • This new material can respond to its environment and repair itself • It opens the door to self-healing buildings, adaptive medical implants, and living machines • It blurs the line between biology and engineering The deeper implication is enormous: We are entering the age of living materials objects that are not just built, but grown and evolved. The future of technology may not be made of metal and plastic… but of living, breathing, self-repairing matter. What would you build first with a material that can heal itself and adapt? Follow for more frontier physics and future technology.

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Would you say this video “shows” that Cornell President Kotlikoff “ran over the foot” of a student, as the Cornell Daily Sun claims here? I wouldn’t.
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Would you say this video “shows” that Cornell President Kotlikoff “ran over the foot” of a student, as the Cornell Daily Sun claims here? I wouldn’t.

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Engineers: “This is a breakthrough in soft robotics.” Twitter: “Bro built an AI vibrator.” 🤦‍♂️ Researchers at the University of Southern Denmark created a soft robot that moves by inflating and contracting its body like a worm. Jokes aside… robots like this could actually be useful for rescue missions and environments where traditional robots fail. But let’s be honest: you already know what most comment sections are going to talk about 💀 🎥 Media: SDU Soft Robotics ⚠️ This content is shared for informational purposes only. CTO Robotics Media is a media platform and does not own or develop the technology shown. Credit belongs to the original creators.

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Researchers from Tel Aviv University and Sheba Medical Center have developed an AI system that detects anemia using a 10-second scan of blood vessels in the eye, without a blood test. The technology could make health screening faster, simpler and more accessible worldwide. 👁️🇮🇱

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Had an amazing time at the Stanford Robotics Center Launch event this Saturday! The Packard building’s underground floor has been transformed into a bright new robotics lab, complete with a mocap room, specialized spaces for domestic, field, and surgical robots, and even an aquarium in progress for the Ocean One bot! Check out the videos below—there’s one of me operating a Da Vinci surgical robot 🤖 Robotics truly embodies interdisciplinary collaboration, pulling together expertise from electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, computer science, materials science, HCI, and design. It’s the kind of field where no single department could drive research forward alone. This new center is an incredible resource to unite researchers, and I have to admit, I’m a bit envious of the PhD students who get to work in such an inspiring environment! Look forward to more great research work from Stanford!

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17,886 views • 1 year ago

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Mesmerizing 45-degree infinity module of the GA3D project in action. The GA3D Project is a “side-project” driven by a passion for the RepRap 3D printer theme, aiming to extend the RepRap/DIY (Do-It-Yourself) spirit to other processes and fields. The basic machine consists of a frame with a fixed table, and a 3-axis Cartesian robotic arm with CoreXY kinematics crossed in the XY plane. A very simple tool changer is located at both ends of the robotic arm. This makes it a modular machine that can be easily converted into any machine. Video Credit: Alain D. Geiser #3dprinting #3dprinter #additivetechnology #additivemanufacturing #engineering #technology

Wevolver

68,855 views • 15 days ago

Looking at the new UFO footage from Jeremy Kenyon Lockyer Corbell's Sleeping Dog, I find myself asking: What the hell are these all made out of? It is possible that the word “craft” is already imposing too familiar a category on something far less conventional. What if these objects are not always composed of a material in any sense we would normally recognize? What if the hull is not an assembled exterior, but something closer to a materialized field condition: a stable interface between energy, geometry, and matter? A human aircraft is built from parts. Wings, alloys, rivets, electronics, engines. Its structure is mechanical, sectional, and industrial. But a sufficiently advanced non-human vehicle may not be “built” in that sense at all. What if it is "cohered"? Its surface might function less like armor and more like a programmable boundary layer: a physical skin capable of altering its optical, thermal, electromagnetic, and inertial behavior in real time. In that case, we may be looking at something that only resembles a machine because the human mind has no better category available. Perhaps the craft is not simply an object moving through an environment, but an engineered exception to the environment. #ufox #ufotwitter
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Looking at the new UFO footage from Jeremy Kenyon Lockyer Corbell's Sleeping Dog, I find myself asking: What the hell are these all made out of? It is possible that the word “craft” is already imposing too familiar a category on something far less conventional. What if these objects are not always composed of a material in any sense we would normally recognize? What if the hull is not an assembled exterior, but something closer to a materialized field condition: a stable interface between energy, geometry, and matter? A human aircraft is built from parts. Wings, alloys, rivets, electronics, engines. Its structure is mechanical, sectional, and industrial. But a sufficiently advanced non-human vehicle may not be “built” in that sense at all. What if it is "cohered"? Its surface might function less like armor and more like a programmable boundary layer: a physical skin capable of altering its optical, thermal, electromagnetic, and inertial behavior in real time. In that case, we may be looking at something that only resembles a machine because the human mind has no better category available. Perhaps the craft is not simply an object moving through an environment, but an engineered exception to the environment. #ufox #ufotwitter

Tom Thompson🛸 (ＣＯＲＴＥＸ ＺＥＲＯ)

182,525 views • 1 month ago

About LOM BABY A science collective of artists, engineers, and scientists exploring “the birth of life.” Through biotechnology and artificial life research, it brings 2D characters into reality and works to create “dragon meat.” SONIC THE HEDGEHOG × LOM BABY Coming Soon
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About LOM BABY A science collective of artists, engineers, and scientists exploring “the birth of life.” Through biotechnology and artificial life research, it brings 2D characters into reality and works to create “dragon meat.” SONIC THE HEDGEHOG × LOM BABY Coming Soon

LOM BABY

929,238 views • 1 month ago