If You ’ ve Seen One Robot – Wait, What?

BY KIM BELLARD If You’ve Seen One Robot – Wait, What? We think we know robots, from the old school Robbie the Robot to the beloved R2-D2/C-3PO to the acrobatic Boston Dynamics robots or the very human-like Westworld ones.   But you have to love those scientists: they keep coming up with new versions, ones that shatter our preconceptions.  Two, in particular, caught my attention, in part because both expect to have health care applications, and in part because of how they’re described. Hint: the marketing people are going to have some work to do on the names.  ———– Let’s start with the robot called by its creators – a team at The Chinese University of Hong Kong — a “magnetic slime robot,” which some in the press have referred to as a “magnetic turd robot” (see what I mean about the names?).  It has what are called “visco-elastic properties,” which co-creator Professor Li Zhang explained means “sometimes it behaves like a solid, sometimes it behaves like a liquid…When you touch it very quickly it behaves like a solid. When you touch it gently and slowly it behaves like a liquid”   The slime is made from a polymer called polyvinyl alcohol, borax, and particles of neodymium magnet. The magnetic particles allow it to be controlled by other magnets, but also are toxic, so researchers added a protective layer of silica, which would, in theory, allow it to be ingested (although Professor Zhang warned...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Health Tech Kim Bellard robots SlimeBot Source Type: blogs