Show Notes 11 April 2025
Story 1: A flexible robot can help emergency responders search through rubble
Source: MIT News Story by Haley Wahl
Link: https://news.mit.edu/2025/sprout-flexible-robot-help-emergency-responders-search-rubble-0402
See video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaMCTH4qZTE
- When major disasters hit and structures collapse, people can become trapped under rubble. Extricating victims from these hazardous environments can be dangerous and physically exhausting.
- To help rescue teams navigate these structures, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Notre Dame, developed the Soft Pathfinding Robotic Observation Unit (SPROUT).
- SPROUT is a vine robot — a soft robot that can grow and maneuver around obstacles and through small spaces. First responders can deploy SPROUT under collapsed structures to explore, map, and find optimum ingress routes through debris.
- Side note: A “vine robot” is a type of soft robot inspired by the way vines grow and navigate their environment. These robots are designed to extend and maneuver through tight spaces by inflating a flexible, tube-like structure.
- Here’s the problem:
- Cameras specially built for search-and-rescue operations can only probe on a straight path inside of a collapsed structure. If a team wants to search further into a pile, they need to cut an access hole to get to the next area of the space.
- Robots are good for exploring on top of rubble piles, but are ill-suited for searching in tight, unstable structures and costly to repair if damaged.
- The challenge that SPROUT addresses is how to get under collapsed structures using a low-cost, easy-to-operate robot that can carry cameras and sensors and traverse winding paths.
- SPROUT is composed of an inflatable tube made of airtight fabric that unfurls from a fixed base. The tube inflates with air, and a motor controls its deployment. As the tube extends into rubble, it can flex around corners and squeeze through narrow passages.
- A camera and other sensors mounted to the tip of the tube image and map the environment the robot is navigating.
- An operator steers SPROUT with joysticks, watching a screen that displays the robot’s camera feed. Currently, SPROUT can deploy up to 10 feet, and the team is working on expanding it to 25 feet.
- Sensing in constrained spaces is not a problem unique to disaster response communities. The team envisions the technology being used in the maintenance of military systems or critical infrastructure with difficult-to-access locations.
Story 2: Charging electric vehicles 5x faster in subfreezing temps
Source: University of Michigan News
Link: https://news.umich.edu/charging-electric-vehicles-5x-faster-in-subfreezing-temps/
- Here’s the problem:
- Current EV batteries store and release power through the movement of lithium ions back and forth between electrodes via a liquid electrolyte. In cold temperatures, this movement of the ions slows, reducing both battery power as well as the charging rate.
- To extend range, automakers have increased the thickness of the electrodes they use in battery cells. While that has allowed them to promise longer drives between charges, it makes some of the lithium hard to access, resulting in slower charging and less power for a given battery weight.
- Now for the news – A modified manufacturing process for electric vehicle batteries, developed by University of Michigan engineers, could enable high ranges and fast charging in cold weather, solving problems that are turning potential EV buyers away.
- As one of the authors of the team’s research paper noted, “We envision this approach as something that EV battery manufacturers could adopt without major changes to existing factories. For the first time, we’ve shown a pathway to simultaneously achieve extreme fast charging at low temperatures, without sacrificing the energy density of the lithium-ion battery.”
- Lithium-ion EV batteries made using the technology developed by the University of Michigan team can charge 500% faster at temperatures as low as 14 F (-10 C).
- The key advancement – The structure and coating demonstrated by the team prevented the formation of performance-hindering lithium plating on the battery’s electrodes. As a result, batteries with these modifications keep 97% of their capacity even after being fast charged 100 times at very cold temperatures.
Story 3: Early Study Shows Promise for Eye-Surgery Robot Invented at the University of Utah
Source: University of Utah website
See video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpHt-put4t8
See research paper here: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.adp7700
- When even the most highly trained surgeons perform procedures on the retina—one of the smallest, most delicate parts of the human body, the stakes are high. Surgeons must account for patients’ breathing, snoring, and eye movements, along with their own involuntary hand tremors, while they work on a layer of cells less than a millimeter thick.
- That’s why researchers at the University of Utah’s John A. Moran Eye Center and the John and Marcia Price College of Engineering have collaborated to create a new robotic surgery device that aims to give surgeons “superhuman” hands.
- Because the device is not yet approved to operate on human subjects, testing required a human volunteer fitted with special goggles that allowed an animal eye [i.e. a pig eye] to be mounted just in front of their natural eye.
- The robot is extremely precise, executing movements as small as one micrometer, or smaller than a single human cell.
- The robot is also small enough to be mounted directly to the patient’s head using a helmet.
- Once in place subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) movements of the patient’s head are compensated, keeping the eye quite still from the perspective of the robot.
- The robot also scales down the surgeon’s movements, measured using a handheld robotic device known as a haptic interface, to the much-smaller surgical site within the eye, compensating for hand tremors along the way.
- While still in testing stages, the device aims to improve outcomes for patients and support cutting-edge procedures including the delivery of gene therapies for inherited retinal diseases.
Story 4: World’s smallest pacemaker is activated by light – Tiny device can be inserted with a syringe, then dissolves after it’s no longer needed
Source: Northwestern University website Story by Amanda Morris
Link: https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2025/03/worlds-smallest-pacemaker-is-activated-by-light/
See video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_0hZ8cUwgo
- Northwestern University engineers have developed a pacemaker so tiny that it can fit inside the tip of a syringe — and be non-invasively injected into the body.
- Although it can work with hearts of all sizes, the pacemaker is particularly well-suited to the tiny, fragile hearts of newborn babies with congenital heart defects.
- Smaller than a single grain of rice, the pacemaker is paired with a small, soft, flexible, wireless, wearable device that mounts onto a patient’s chest to control pacing. When the wearable device detects an irregular heartbeat, it automatically shines a light pulse to activate the pacemaker. These short pulses— which penetrate through the patient’s skin, breastbone and muscles — control the pacing.
- Designed for patients who only need temporary pacing, the pacemaker simply dissolves after it’s no longer needed. All the pacemaker’s components are biocompatible, so they naturally dissolve into the body’s biofluids, bypassing the need for surgical extraction.
- “Our major motivation was children,” said one of the authors of the team’s research paper. “About 1% of children are born with congenital heart defects —The good news is that these children only need temporary pacing after a surgery. In about seven days or so, most patients’ hearts will self-repair. But those seven days are absolutely critical. Now, we can place this tiny pacemaker on a child’s heart and stimulate it with a soft, gentle, wearable device. And no additional surgery is necessary to remove it.”
Honorable Mentions
Story: Unlocking the Future of Green Energy: Exploring Hydrogen Production from Marine Microbes
Source: Science Magazine
- A recent genomic exploration into the hydrogen-producing bacteria known as Vibrionaceae has unveiled groundbreaking insights regarding their genetic diversity and potential for biofuel production. Historically acknowledged for their association with marine environments and occasional pathogenicity, these bacteria are now garnering attention due to their unique capacity to produce hydrogen gas from formate fermentation. This shift in perspective might revolutionize green energy applications, providing a sustainable alternative to traditional fossil fuels.
- The research team, spearheaded by Professor Tomoo Sawabe from Hokkaido University’s Faculty of Fisheries Sciences, in collaboration with scientists from the National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology, India, and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, embarked on a quest to understand the underlying mechanisms facilitating this remarkable bioenergy production. Their results, which were meticulously documented in the peer-reviewed journal Current Microbiology, present a compelling case for the consideration of Vibrionaceae as biofuel producers.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Story: Scientists discover major differences in how humans and AI ‘think’ — and the implications could be significant
Source: LiveScience.com Story by Drew Turney
- We know that artificial intelligence (AI) can’t think the same way as a person, but new research has revealed how this difference might affect AI’s decision-making, leading to real-world ramifications humans might be unprepared for.
- The study, published Feb. 2025 in the journal Transactions on Machine Learning Research, examined how well large language models (LLMs) can form analogies.
- They found that in both simple letter-string analogies and digital matrix problems — where the task was to complete a matrix by identifying the missing digit — humans performed well but AI performance declined sharply.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Story: Smartphones Could Diagnose Diseases Using Infrared Scans
Source: LabMedica.com
- Rapid advancements in technology may soon make it possible for individuals to bypass invasive medical procedures by simply uploading a screenshot of their lab results from their phone directly to their doctor. This innovative approach to personalized medicine and disease diagnostics is being driven by groundbreaking research at Georgia State University (Atlanta, GA, USA).
- A research team at Georgia State University is pioneering non-invasive, accessible medical diagnostics through the use of ATR-FTIR spectroscopy, which stands for attenuated total reflectance-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. This technique allows for the examination of the molecular composition of materials by using infrared light to uncover minute details that are typically not visible. Applied to medical diagnostics, this technology enables the early detection of diseases like melanoma through an infrared scan. The research has already shown considerable promise in improving diagnostic capabilities for various conditions, earning patents for the detection of melanoma, lymphoma, colitis, and other forms of cell activation.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Story: Airbus advances key technologies for next-generation single-aisle aircraft [this refers to their plans for a hydrogen/electric aircraft – good example of growing interest in this technology]
Source: Airbus.com
- Toulouse, 25 March 2025 – During the 2025 Airbus Summit, Airbus provided an update on its roadmap to pioneer the future of commercial aviation in the decades to come. The Company outlined potential technology bricks to prepare a next-generation single-aisle aircraft that could enter service in the second half of the 2030s, as well as its revised roadmap to mature the technologies associated with hydrogen-powered flight.
- Airbus provided more details regarding the key technology building blocks that could enable the entry into service of a next-generation single-aisle aircraft with an expected 20-30% increase in fuel efficiency compared with the current generation, as well as the capability to fly with up to 100% sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). Airbus also unveiled new design concepts that showcase the different configurations being studied for this future aircraft, highlighting the various potential solutions that are being explored in order to achieve this major leap forward in aircraft efficiency, and support the aviation sector’s roadmap towards net-zero emissions in 2050.
- Technologies include more efficient engines, including disruptive open fan designs; long foldable wings allowing for significant aerodynamic gains; next-generation batteries to enable hybrid architectures where electricity is increasingly used to support propulsive and non-propulsive functions aboard the aircraft’ and lightweight materials and integrated systems for a connected aircraft.
Leave a Reply