Mechanical Engineering

‘Metallic wood’ has the strength of titanium and the density of water

In a study published in Nature Scientific Reports, researchers at the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and the University of Cambridge have built a sheet of nickel with nanoscale pores that make it as strong as titanium, but four to five times lighter.

Engineers 3D print smart objects with ‘embodied logic’

Researchers at the School of Engineering and Applied Science have taken inspiration from the sorts of systems embodied in Venus fly traps, utilizing stimuli-responsive materials and geometric principles to design structures that have “embodied logic.”

Autonomous weapons and the new laws of war

The School of Arts and Sciences’ Michael Horowitz weighed in on the downsides of requiring arms control for the use of autonomous weaponry, saying it would be “extremely hard to verify using traditional arms-control techniques.”

For a glimpse into the future, look at aerial robotics

An event about aerial robotics with the School of Engineering and Applied Science’s dean Vijay Kumar is featured.

Teachers become students to become better teachers at GRASP Lab’s RET program

The Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) program run by the GRASP Lab in the School of Engineering and Applied Science is part of a larger National Science Foundation effort to get students interested in science and engineering at an early age. This summer, one cohort of students worked with robots in the Rehabilitation Robotics Lab at the Perelman School of Medicine.

Mapping the ocean with marine robots

M. Ani Hsieh’s robotics lab investigates how to use ocean currents as a natural energy source for marine robots, which would enable widespread exploration.

Guinness recognizes Piccolissimo as world’s smallest self-powered flying robot

Created in professor Mark Yim’s ModLab, with graduate student Matt Piccoli, the world’s smallest flying robot can carry the weight of a small camera or sensor, with just two moving parts achieving directional control.

The snow graphics in ‘Frozen’ can predict the mechanics of real avalanches

The Department of Computer and Information Science’s Chenfanfu Jiang recently published a study in Nature Communications that accurately models slab avalanches, bringing realistic natural phenomena to movies and practical applications for scientific predictions.

New GRASP project aims to leverage ‘embodied intelligence’ via a robotic squirrel

A team of engineers from Penn's GRASP lab has designed a mechanical squirrel with "embodied intelligence," capable of pulling off parkour feats using multi-sensory adaptation to interact with its surroundings.

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