gene-h
Joined 11 years ago
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Aug 20
Recent submissions
Comment · 4 months ago
It'd be nice if they had some pictures of placed nanotubes rather than the generic nanotube spaghetti they show. Maybe make a logo like 'C12' with them to show the pick and place process is versatile.
Comment · 5 months ago
This is an experimental demonstration of the technology that makes Neal Stephenson's "Diamond Age" possible. They place an individual carbon atom pair(dimer) on silicon. Silicon has the same crystal structure as diamond, so adding carbon in this manner is similar to building diamond. There is potential for eventually making 3D atomically precise structures of diamond with this tech although that is far off.
This is a very, very basic demonstration, but it's showing for the first time that atoms can be controllably and programmably covalently bonded in something that can probably be extended to 3D. There was a lot of skepticism that this process was possible at all, so an experimental demonstration is important
Comment · 1 year ago
This project was cancelled a couple months ago:
https://breakingdefense.com/2025/06/darpas-draco-nuclear-pro...
Comment · 1 year ago
There are proposals for the 6G standard to support Integrated Sensing and Communication(ISAC)[0]. So the hardware might natively be able to support gait recognition. The use cases given are UAV detection and localization. It sort of seems like this could bring Vernor Vinge's localizer mesh to reality, privacy implications be damned
[0]https://www.ericsson.com/en/blog/2024/6/integrated-sensing-a...
Comment · 1 year ago
Industrial robots at least are very reliable, MTBF is often upwards of 100,000 hours[0]. Industrial robots are optimized to be as reliable as possible because the longer they last and less often they need to be fixed, the more profitable they are. In fact, German and Japanese companies came to dominate the industrial robotics market because they focused on reliability. They developed rotary electric actuators that were more reliable. Cincinnati Millicron(US) was out competed in the industrial robot market because although their hydraulic robots were strong, they were less reliable.
I am personally a bit skeptical of anthropormophic hands achieving similarly high reliability. There's just too many small parts that need to withstand high forces.
[0]https://robotsdoneright.com/Articles/what-are-the-different-...
Comment · 1 year ago
Energy out/energy into capsule
Comment · 1 year ago
This will probably need to be updated soon. There are rumors NIF recently achieved a gain of ~4.4 and ~10% fuel burn up. Being able to ignite more fuel is notable in and of itself.
Comment · 1 year ago
And why wouldn't it work? Linear slide like mechanisms consisting of a silver surface and single molecule have been demonstrated[0]. The molecule only moved along rows of the silver surface. It was demonstrated to stay in one of these grooves up to 150 nm. A huge distance at this scale.
Comment · 1 year ago
A similar single motor robot hand has been made that uses electrostatic clutches instead of mechanical clutches[O].
Comment · 1 year ago
At some point, making mechanical watches more complicated will require going digital. It is possible to make very small gears with semiconductor processes, however, very small gears wear out fast due to stiction.
In order for gears to work they must have sliding contact and that means wear. Mechanisms based on flexures don't have this problem, but this requires building the clock very differently. It might be possible to implement many of these complications using flexure based logic[0].
Comment · 1 year ago
I would not consider this a 'robot' because power and control is not on board. It's more of a puppet than a robot. At the very least, the magnets should be included in the size of the robot.