Tag: harvard

Harvard invents flat lens

Posted on February 20, 2015 by - News

glassesPhysicists at Harvard University claim to have made a breakthrough in optics that will mean perfect colours can be captured with a flat ultra thin lens.

The prototype, made of a glass substrate, includes small light concentrating silicon antennae – when light is shone on the lens it bends immediately but light passes through.

And the effects of the bending can be designed in software and fine tuned for different applications.

Robert Wallace, professor of applied physics at Harvard said: “What this now means is that complicated effects like colour corrections, which in a conventional optical system would require light to pass through several thick lenses in sequence, can be achieved in one extremely thin, miniaturised device.”

Bernard Kress, in charge of Google optics, posed a challenge to work toward the goal of a flat lens. And for him, at least Google Glass is not dead and buried.

He said: “The Google Glass group is relying heavily on state of the art optical technologies to develop products that have higher functionalities, are easier to mass produce, have a smaller footprint, and are lighter, without compromising efficiency.”

The Harvard physicists think the invention will rival equipment used in photography, astronomy and microscopy. It will also likely e used in optical comms devices, compact cameras and imaging devices.

 

Laser inventor dies

Posted on January 28, 2015 by - News

r6uhkgtsix9vtvl3pjd4The boffin who laid the foundations for the development of the laser has died. Charles Townes was 99.

Townes who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1964 is  best known as the “inventor” of the laser but he was also a pioneer in the field of infrared astronomy and was the first to discover water in space.

He first built a maser in the mid-1950s, which used microwave amplification rather than light.

At the time Gordon Gould at ARPA and Ted Maiman at Hughes Labs were working on similar research in the late 1950s. I Maiman who built a practical laser in 1960, but he used the published research of Townes.

Townes shared his 1964 Nobel Prize with Russian scientists N. G. Basov and Aleksandr Prokhorov because they were also working on the laser in the Soviet Union concurrently and independently of Townes.

Later in his life, he became famous for suggesting that one-day science and religion would one day merge, revealing the secrets of creation.

The committed Christian told some Harvard students: “I look at science and religion as quite parallel, much more similar than most people think and that in the long run, they must converge. It’s a fantastically specialized universe, but how in the world did it happen?”

He was honoured in 2005 with the Templeton Prize for contributions to “affirming life’s spiritual dimension.”

Townes never really stopped working and would show up at Berkeley until he became unwell last year.

He did live long enough for his laser to be turned into the sci-fi weapon that it was touted to be in the 1960s, although not long enough to see them strapped to sharks.

Harvard creates indestructible robot

Posted on September 12, 2014 by - News

t1000Boffins, who clearly have never seen any Terminator movie, have come up with an indestructible robot which is also super soft.

Also indicating that they never saw any 1980s slasher flims they have made it soft, like a child’s soft-toy thus creating Terminator chucky.

Of course, that is not what Harvard’s School for Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering are calling it. They are proud that “the world’s first untethered soft robot” can stand up and walk away from its designers, can walk through snow, fire and even be run over by a car.

They think that such robots might one day serve as a search and rescue tool following disasters, not create disasters by trying to take over the world.

A team of researchers that included Kevin Galloway, Michael Karpelson, Bobak Mosadegh, Robert Shepherd, Michael Tolley, and Michael Wehner scaled up earlier soft-robot designs, enabling a single robot to carry on its back all the equipment it needs to operate — micro-compressors, control systems, and batteries.

Tolley , a research associate in materials science and mechanical engineering at the Wyss Institute and the study’s first author, said that the earlier versions of soft robots were all tethered, which works fine in some applications.

One of the hardest things for the researchers was challenging people’s concept of what a robot has to look like.

“We think the reason people have settled on using metal and rigid materials for robots is because they’re easier to model and control. This work is very inspired by nature, and we wanted to demonstrate that soft materials can also be the basis for robots.”

The robot is a half-meter in length and capable of carrying as much as 7½ pounds on its back. Giving the untethered robot the strength needed to carry mechanical components meant air pressures as high as 16 pounds per square inch. To deal with the increased pressure, the robot had to be made of tougher stuff.

They used a “composite” silicone rubber made from stiff rubber impregnated with hollow glass microspheres to reduce the robot’s weight. The robot’s bottom was made from Kevlar fabric to ensure it was tough and lightweight. It is very important to have a touch and lightweight bottom.

Researchers tested the robot in snow, submerged it in water, walked it through flames, and even ran it over with a car. It could not be killed.

The researchers think that because the robot is soft and cuddly, humans are more likely to interact with it and it opens up many more opportunities.