Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

Why America is losing the toilet race + The tentacle bot

#1
C C Offline
Why America is losing the toilet race
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2020/...oilet-race

EXCERPT: I just got back from my first trip to Japan, and I'm now in love with the country. The ramen, yakitori and sushi. The gorgeous volcanoes. The fascinating people and culture. But of all the things I fell in love with, there's one that I can't stop thinking about: the toilets.

Japanese toilets are marvels of technological innovation. They have integrated bidets, which squirt water to clean your private parts. They have dryers and heated seats. They use water efficiently, clean themselves and deodorize the air, so bathrooms actually smell good. They have white noise machines, so you can fill your stall with the sound of rain for relaxation and privacy. Some even have built-in night lights and music players. It's all customizable and controlled by electronic buttons on a panel next to your seat.

In Japan, these high-tech toilets are everywhere: hotels, restaurants, bus stations, rest stops and around 80% of homes. It's glorious. Then, I come back to the United States, and our toilets are stuck in the age of dirty coal mines and the horse and buggy. They basically have one feature: flush. No heated seats. No nice smells and sounds. No sanitizing blasts of liquid. It's like cleaning your dishes without water. It's gross. And it got me thinking: Why can't we have high-tech toilets too?

Most of the toilets in Japan are made by a company called Toto [...] It put me in touch with Bill Strang, the president of corporate strategy and e-commerce at Toto USA. "U.S. toilets are effectively bedpans with a drain," says Strang. (MORE - details)

- - -

NOTE: Complicated toilets are likely more troublesome to fix when they break down -- they may require more than a plumber or a DIY remedy. The digital electronics may increase their chances of going haywire. If they're also hooked-up to the internet like the growing number of ridiculous household appliances, then they could even be hacked or infected with malware. The extra comforts they provide are purely what the most over-pampered humans would crave as part of their social-class race of keeping up with the Joneses. The epitome of making judgments via monkey-like impulses in the context of the most vacuous territory of pop-market value constructs.



The Tentacle Bot (See original article to view animated gifs of how the robot tentacles work.)
https://www.seas.harvard.edu/news/2020/02/tentacle-bot

RELEASE: Of all the cool things about octopuses (and there’s a lot), their arms may rank among the coolest. Two-thirds of an octopus’s neurons are in its arms, meaning each arm literally has a mind of its own. Octopus arms can untie knots, open childproof bottles, and wrap around prey of any shape or size. The hundreds of suckers that cover their arms can form strong seals even on rough surfaces underwater.

Imagine if a robot could do all that. Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and Beihang University have developed an octopus-inspired soft robotic arm that can grip, move, and manipulate a wide range of objects. Its flexible, tapered design, complete with suction cups, gives the gripper a firm grasp on objects of all shapes, sizes and textures -- from eggs to iPhones to large exercise balls.

“Most previous research on octopus-inspired robots focused either on mimicking the suction or the movement of the arm, but not both,” said August Domel, a recent PhD graduate of Harvard and co-first author of the paper. “Our research is the first to quantify the tapering angles of the arms and the combined functions of bending and suction, which allows for a single small gripper to be used for a wide range of objects that would otherwise require the use of multiple grippers.” The research is published in Soft Robotics.

The researchers began by studying the tapering angle of real octopus arms and quantifying which design for bending and grabbing objects would work best for a soft robot. Next, the team looked at the layout and structure of the suckers (yes, that is the scientific term) and incorporated them into the design.

“We mimicked the general structure and distribution of these suckers for our soft actuators,” said co-first author Zhexin Xie, a PhD student at Beihang University. “Although our design is much simpler than its biological counterpart, these vacuum-based biomimetic suckers can attach to almost any object.” Xie is the co-inventor of the Festo Tentacle Gripper, which is the first fully integrated implementation of this technology in a commercial prototype.

Researchers control the arm with two valves, one to apply pressure for bending the arm and one for a vacuum that engages the suckers. By changing the pressure and vacuum, the arm can attach to an object, wrap around it, carry it, and release it. The researchers successfully tested the device on many different objects, including thin plastic sheets, coffee mugs, test tubes, eggs, and even live crabs. The tapering also allowed the arm to squeeze into confined spaces and retrieve objects.

“The results from our study not only provide new insights into the creation of next-generation soft robotic actuators for gripping a wide range of morphologically diverse objects, but also contribute to our understanding of the functional significance of arm taper angle variability across octopus species,” said Katia Bertoldi, the William and Ami Kuan Danoff Professor of Applied Mechanics at SEAS, and co-senior author of the study.

This research was also co-authored by Ning An, Connor Green, Zheyuan Gong, Tianmiao Wang, Elias M. Knubben, James C. Weaver, and Li Wen. It was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under grant DMREF-1533985 and Festo Corporate’s project division.
Reply
#2
Zinjanthropos Offline
Quote:Japanese toilets are marvels of technological innovation. They have integrated bidets, which squirt water to clean your private parts. They have dryers and heated seats. They use water efficiently, clean themselves and deodorize the air, so bathrooms actually smell good. They have white noise machines, so you can fill your stall with the sound of rain for relaxation and privacy. Some even have built-in night lights and music players. It's all customizable and controlled by electronic buttons on a panel next to your seat.


Wow! What a transformation in 75 years. From Samurai and the Bushido Code, Masters of the Pacific & in cahoots with Adolph, to having the above.
Reply


Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Race to make vaccines for breast cancer and the rest C C 0 284 Oct 19, 2022 12:13 AM
Last Post: C C
  China is losing microchip war to the United States; how the CCP tries to catch up C C 0 64 Aug 10, 2021 07:08 PM
Last Post: C C
  The Race to Reinvent Cement C C 3 569 Oct 20, 2018 11:27 PM
Last Post: Zinjanthropos



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)