Nov 14, 2014 05:30 AM
http://www.scienceworldreport.com/articl...humans.htm
EXCERPT: Imagine robots with muscles. Does it sound like science fiction? It may actually be closer to reality than you'd think. Scientists have shown how chains of self-assembling particles could potentially serve as electrically activated muscles in machines that are smaller than a grain of sand.
The machines are called microbots and while you may think that something so tiny wouldn't be all that useful, you'd be mistaken. Microbots could be a huge boon in areas, such as medicine and manufacturing. Yet they also face challenges when it comes to their creation, including the problem of actually building the microbots and then making them mobile.
That's why scientists decided to see how they could actually cause the robots to move. In this case, the scientists showed that some gold plating and an alternating electric field can help oblong particles form chains that extend by roughly 36 percent when the electric field is on....
EXCERPT: Imagine robots with muscles. Does it sound like science fiction? It may actually be closer to reality than you'd think. Scientists have shown how chains of self-assembling particles could potentially serve as electrically activated muscles in machines that are smaller than a grain of sand.
The machines are called microbots and while you may think that something so tiny wouldn't be all that useful, you'd be mistaken. Microbots could be a huge boon in areas, such as medicine and manufacturing. Yet they also face challenges when it comes to their creation, including the problem of actually building the microbots and then making them mobile.
That's why scientists decided to see how they could actually cause the robots to move. In this case, the scientists showed that some gold plating and an alternating electric field can help oblong particles form chains that extend by roughly 36 percent when the electric field is on....