E-Mail
IMAGE: A metalens fabricated on 2-inch glass wafer (left) and a scanning fiber mounted through a piezo tube (right). The fiber tip locates within the focal length of the metalens. Light. view more
Credit: Photo credit: Zhaoyi Li/Harvard University
Despite all the advances in consumer technology over the past decades, one component has remained frustratingly stagnant: the optical lens. Unlike electronic devices, which have gotten smaller and more efficient over the years, the design and underlying physics of today s optical lenses haven t changed much in about 3,000 years.
This challenge has caused a bottleneck in the development of next-generation optical systems such as wearable displays for virtual reality, which require compact, lightweight, and cost-effective components.
Credit: (Image courtesy of Guy Theraulaz/Harvard SEAS)
Following a series of studies on termite mound physiology and morphogenesis over the past decade, researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have now developed a mathematical model to help explain how termites construct their intricate mounds.
The research is published in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Termite mounds are amongst the greatest examples of animal architecture on our planet, said L. Mahadevan, the Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics, of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and of Physics and lead author of the study. What are they for? How do they work? How are they built? These are the questions that have puzzled many scientists for a long time.
Harvard robot inspired by fish swims in a school
Shane McGlaun - Jan 18, 2021, 5:57am CST
Fish swimming in a massive school have complex and synchronous behaviors to help them find food, migrate, and evade predators. The school of fish isn’t coordinated by a single fish or a team. Fish also don’t communicate with each other about what to do next. How this swarm moves comes from something known as implicit coordination happening when an individual fish makes decisions based on what their neighbor is doing.
A team of researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Wyss Institute for biologically Inspired Engineering developed robots inspired by fish able to synchronize their movements like a real school of fish would without external control. Researchers say this is the first time they have demonstrated complex 3D collective behaviors and implicit coordination in underwater robots.
Close
Engineers at Harvard University have developed a school of seven robot fish that can swim in circles without crashing into one another. The robot fish can swim in real-time just like real fishes..
Previously, researchers have tried to make robots coordinate themselves in water but have failed. Recently, a team of researchers from Harvard University has succeeded in developing a swarm of robotic fish that can swim without crashing into one another.
(Photo : Peter Simons)
The engineers developed swarms of robotic fish that coordinate their movement through a centralized computer. The computer gives them directions on where they should go in the form of GPS coordinates.
Autonomous robot swarm swims like a school of fish
These underwater robots operate as a collective artificial intelligence.
Researchers have devised a swarm of small fish-inspired robots that can synchronize their movements by themselves, without any human input. The autonomous robots essentially mimic the behavior of a school of fish in nature, exhibiting a realistic, complex three-dimensional collective behavior.
Each robo-fish (called a ‘Bluebot’) is equipped with cameras and sensors that enable it to track its neighbors and get a sense of direction. This is a step beyond the typical multi-robot communication system, in which individual bots have to communicate with each other via radio and constantly transmit their GPS data.