Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a new method that doesn’t require any special equipment and works in just minutes to create soft, flexible, 3D-printed robots. The innovation comes from rethinking the way soft robots are built: instead of figuring out how to add soft materials to […]

Biology is the most advanced manufacturing technology on the planet. Every day, synthetic biologists around the world make progress in a quest to leverage nature’s genius as a manufacturing tool and to make biology easier to engineer. This week, World Economic Forum Tech Pioneer Zymergen introduced Hyaline, a new bio-film for […]

We are familiar with drones that look high-tech but rather robotic, sprouting multiple sets of rotors or with long, imposing, fixed wings. Yet the UAVs of the future might look less like vehicles and more like insects, birds or even bats. Here we look at three nature-inspired examples.

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Composites combine the desirable properties of several materials to exhibit enhanced physical, chemical, and mechanical properties that are different from their individual constituents. Some high-performance materials have been developed using this method. In the automobile, marine, and aerospace industries, such composites play key roles as they provide light-weight, superior mechanical and […]

The new wing replaces the smooth contour found on the leading edges of most airplane wings with a thick flat plate and a sharp leading edge. Counterintuitive as it may seem, it turns out that the design has distinct aerodynamic advantages at the scale of small drones. In a paper published […]