Soft Squishy Robots !!!!

A team of Harvard scientists designed a “soft” robot which can move under difficult obstacles by mimicking the movements of certain animals, such as squid and worms.

The robot doesn’t have a hard internal skeleton; it is composed solely of elastomeric polymers and a series of chambers. Using a pneumatic valving system, the chambers can be inflated to create movement, which boils down to a combination of crawling and undulation.

All of this enables the 5-inch robot to crawl, for example, under a glass plate elevated 2 cm from the ground. In a series of tests, scientists were able to navigate the robot through that gap in under a minute.

This type of design makes the robot less susceptible to damage from falls and colliding with hard objects. It does, however, makes it more susceptible to damage from punctures.

Another drawback is the problem of power: the robot is connected to an external power source, which won’t do in real world situations. “There are many challenges to actively moving soft robots and no easy solutions,” neurobiologist Barry Trimmer, one of the designers of the robot, said in an email to Washington Post

ROLL TOP COMPUTERS ON THE MOVE.........!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rolltop is a portable computer development concept for designer, architect and everyone, who would like to have a gadget, which, from an aesthetic standpoint alone, certainly hits the mark. By virtue of the OLED-Display technology and a multitouchscreen the utility of a laptop computer with its weight of a mini-notebook and screen size of 13 inch easily transforms into the graphics tablet, which with its 17-inch flat screen can be also used as a primary monitor due to the support attached to the back of the screen.

Rolltop 2.0 is a further development of Rolltop with some visible and mostly invisible improvements (e.g. internal design, placement of certain components etc.)

Proposition

Rolltop is not a “virtual and futuristic” gadget, existing only on the screen of your computer as in the most of similar concepts and visions! Most of the existing design concepts usually have been developed without any deep technologic and ergonomic elaboration and often could be difficult or even impossible realized. From the beginning Rolltop has been developed as a real future product. During its development a lot of different scenarios (e.g. usability, functionality etc.) were simulated. Moreover we have included in Rolltop the best worldwide ergonomic, mechanic and electronic practices.

Technology

The device of the flexible display allows a new concept in notebook design growing out of the traditional “bookformed” laptop into unfurling and convolving portable computer. Rolltop incorporates both latest high-tech devices and a new brand design techniques into a computer that will increase the quality and productivity of the designers work. On top of everything else no laptop bag needed – all computer utilities from an interactive pen through power supply to the holding belt are integrated in Rolltop. This is really an all-in-one gadget.