Harvard University’s robotic insect takes its first controlled flight (video)

Harvard University's robotic insect takes its first controlled flight video

There's hardly a shortage of animal inspired robots, but few are as tiny as Harvard's autonomous RoboBee. The robotic insect has been around for a while, but researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering only recently managed a minor breakthrough: controlled flight. Using new manufacturing and design processes, the team has managed to keep the coin-sized bug aloft by independently manipulating the robot's wings with piezoelectric actuators and a delicate control system.

"This is what I have been trying to do for literally the last 12 years," explains Professor Robert J Wood, Charles River Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences. "Now that we've got this unique platform, there are dozens of tests that we're starting to do, including more aggressive control maneuvers and landing." There's more to be done, however. The tiny machine still requires a tether for power and control, and researchers are still studying nature to suss out how insects cope with flying through wind and the elements. Eventually, the team hopes to outfit the RoboBee with lightweight batteries, an internal control system and a lighter chassis. For now, however, they're just happy to learned to steer. Check out the insect in action after the break.

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Harvard stores 704TB in a gram of DNA, may have us shopping for organically-grown storage (video)

Harvard stores 704TB in a gram of DNA, may have us shopping for organicallygrown storage video

Early research has had DNA making circuits and little factories. We haven't really seen DNA used as a storage medium, however, and it's evident we've been missing out. A Harvard team led by George Church, Sriram Kosuri and Yuan Gao can stuff 96 bits into a DNA strand by treating each base (A, C, G, T) as though it's a binary value. The genetic sequence is then synthesized by a microfluidic chip that matches up that sequence with its position in a relevant data set, even when all the DNA strands are out of order. The technique doesn't sound like much on its own, but the microscopic size amounts to a gigantic amount of information at a scale we can see: about 704TB of data fits into a cubic millimeter, or more than you'd get out of a few hundred hard drives. Caveats? The processing time is currently too slow for time-sensitive content, and cells with living DNA would destroy the strands too quickly to make them viable for anything more than just transfers. All the same, such density and a lifespan of eons could have us turning to DNA storage not just for personal backups, but for backing up humanity's collective knowledge. We're less ambitious -- we'd most like to know if we'll be buying organic hard drives alongside the fair trade coffee and locally-sourced fruit.

Continue reading Harvard stores 704TB in a gram of DNA, may have us shopping for organically-grown storage (video)

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Harvard stores 704TB in a gram of DNA, may have us shopping for organically-grown storage (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 19 Aug 2012 01:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Alt-week 7.28.12: social mathematics, Pluto’s moons and humans-on-a-chip

Alt-week peels back the covers on some of the more curious sci-tech stories from the last seven days.

Alt-week 7.28.12

It's a beautiful world we live in. And, while the sweet and romantic part is debatable, strange and fantastic is not. Our universe is one populated by non-planetary celestial bodies with their own non-planetary satellites, high school social hierarchies based on predictable mathematical formulas and military-funded "gut-on-a-chips." It's a weird place filled with weird stories, and we just can't get enough of it. So, what has the last seven days brought us from the fringes of science and tech? Keep reading after the break to find out. This is alt-week.

Continue reading Alt-week 7.28.12: social mathematics, Pluto's moons and humans-on-a-chip

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Alt-week 7.28.12: social mathematics, Pluto's moons and humans-on-a-chip originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 28 Jul 2012 20:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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