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Even without a brain, metal-eating robots can search for food
Film still of a small wheeled robot traveling a path between yellow tape.

The “metal-eating” robot can follow a metal path without using a computer or needing a battery. By wiring the power-supplying units to the wheels on the opposite side, the robot autonomously navigates away from the tape and towards aluminum surfaces. (Image: Penn Engineering Today)

Even without a brain, metal-eating robots can search for food

SEAS engineers are developing robot-powered technology with energy sources that are harvested in the robot’s environment.

Evan Lerner

The Philadelphia Orchestra is playing safe
philly orchestra on stage at kimmel

Results of the experiments so far, along with insights from Penn Medicine’s P.J. Brennan, have helped inform the arrangement of members of The Philadelphia Orchestra as they have resumed performances that are captured and later streamed on their new “Digital Stage.” (Image: The Philadelphia Orchestra)

The Philadelphia Orchestra is playing safe

Penn experts are working with The Philadelphia Orchestra to study the aerosol droplets that wind and brass musicians produce when playing. Their findings, aimed at reducing the risk of COVID-19 transmission, could help the Orchestra once again play together.

Katherine Unger Baillie

This L.A. start-up is building tiny injectable robots to attack tumors

This L.A. start-up is building tiny injectable robots to attack tumors

Marc Miskin of the School of Engineering and Applied Science commented on a new startup that is developing remote-control medical microrobots. “I would give them a lot of credit for figuring out a space where they can make an impact and justify how they’ll be competitive with traditional pharmaceutical approaches,” he said.

Researchers reach new heights with light-based levitation
Mohsen Azadi wears latex gloves and wields a scalpel while preparing a photophoretic levitation experiment.

Working in the Bargatin Group’s lab, Mohsen Azadi wields a scalpel while preparing a photophoretic levitation experiment. Unlike the microscopic particles that have been previously levitated with this techniques, the researchers’ flyers are big enough to manipulated by hand. (Image: Eric Sucar)

Researchers reach new heights with light-based levitation

Penn researchers are working to engineer nanoscale features on ultra-lightweight materials, finding the ideal combination that will allow those materials to lift themselves into the air using the energy provided by light.

Evan Lerner

Niko Simpkins: At the nexus of engineering and music
Niko Simpkins sitting with arms folded, smiling

Penn Engineering undergraduate Niko Simpkins. (Image: Penn Engineering Today)

Niko Simpkins: At the nexus of engineering and music

For Niko Simpkins, a musician who performs, produces, and engineers his own tracks, the most exciting processes combine structure and flexibility, creativity, and rigor. As a third-year student in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, he sees his mechanical engineering education as a framework for problem solving that might serve him across a broad set of endeavors, and for now, he’s more interested in learning than narrowing to any one particular career path.

Evan Lerner

Using stress to shape microlevel structures
a trapezoid with gray dots on the left and colored dots on the right representing atoms in a disordered material

Using stress to shape microlevel structures

A new study describes how external forces drive the rearrangement of individual particles in disordered solids, enabling new ways to imbue materials with unique mechanical properties.

Erica K. Brockmeier

‘Nanocardboard’ flyers could serve as Martian atmospheric probes
Graphic rendering of nanocardboard

In this artist’s conception, fleets of flyers could be launched from ground-based rovers and steered with lasers to collect samples. Planets and moons with thin atmospheres and low gravities would enhance these flyers’ ability to levitate by shooting air through their corrugated channels. (Image: Penn Engineering)

‘Nanocardboard’ flyers could serve as Martian atmospheric probes

As NASA plans to launch its next Mars rover, Perseverance, this summer, Penn Engineers are now testing their ‘nanocardboard flyers’ ability to lift payloads.

From Penn Engineering Today

New scavenger technology allows robots to ‘eat’ metal for energy
A robot resembling a toy car attached to a pole turns round and round over a surface covered in hydrogel.

Rather than a battery, the researchers’ metal-air scavenger vehicle gets energy from breaking chemical bonds in the aluminum surface it travels over. The vehicle keeps going until the hydrogel slab it’s dragging dries out or the surface is completely corroded, but a freely moving robot could seek out new sources of water and metal.

New scavenger technology allows robots to ‘eat’ metal for energy

Penn Engineering researchers’ new metal-air scavenger vehicle gets energy from breaking chemical bonds in the aluminum surface it travels over, rather than from batteries.

From Penn Engineering Today