10/06/2017 Click - Short Edition

hour. Will keep you up-to-date with all these deliverance. Let's pause

for a fume and it's a catch up with the latest technology to bromance.

He is clicked. Think robots and maybe you'll

picture something like this or this. But what about robotic muscle and

smart materials that could act as human skin close that the as you

wear them? That is what is cold soft robotics and this team at Bristol

Robotics lab our engineering technologies to do all about and

more. I went to take a peek their labs. This is a bucket of alien

saliva. This is what drips out of the alien mouth. Ridley Scott just

used a whole bunch of that. In this case it is to simulate

blood. This soft robot mimics how some bacteria move through our

bodies was up in the future it is thought that nano robots will take a

similar trip to our brains looking for infection and illness.

That is awesome. Some of the projects involve making assistive

technology are elderly and disabled people like this pneumatic

artificial muscle which can be made into any shape and built into

clothing. As you apply it changes its shape so it could for instance

help people limited grip strength. It is dependent on how much error

pressure you apply anti-some material which can sense when that

pressure should be applied. This diametric elastomer candidate when

it is being stretched so it can sense when you try to move and add

extra power to maybe help you up the stairs. And it can not only detect

movement, it can change shape when you apply a high enough voltage.

You could use it for changeable clothing that contained its colour.

You can use us as a sort of second skint to help with deep vein

thrombosis and assist with pumping blood. It can even be layered up to

create artificial muscles. It does not seem to doing a lot but actually

it is very thin and weighs almost nothing. The act apart only ways

like say four grams and it can live two kilos. None of this is

complicated. None of this is extremely high-tech using billions

of transistors. It is simple voltage and a piece of material. I think

that is one of the big advantages of soft robotics. Simplicity. In a

conjugated robotic system you have a lot of elements that can go wrong

and with the sort of things it is very simple and it is very

adaptable. The intelligence is in the design and immediately useful

rather than the complexity. The Robotics lab in Bristol is a 50,000

square feet high of the innovation filled with hundreds of different

types of robots but what nearly all have in common is they need power to

run. Over in the bioenergy lab scientists are working on one freely

available resource the world will never run out of. You're in. Each

one of the cylinders is a microbial fuel cell device. It turns waste

water into electricity using microbes. So the microbes eat the

waste? They each the ways. That is their favourite item on the menu.

Essentially. I have been to that restaurant, yeah. Two litres of your

lunar spread into the fuel cell power. The microbes eat what they

need, creating electrons as a by-product. Because they are

attached to an electrode surface it is connected to the dues about 30 to

40 minute watts of power. That is enough to slowly charge a smartphone

or power internal lights for their special portable toilets. This is

one use of many. And we do it out of the lab, when we install these units

out of the lab we have many more of them connected together as a stack.

If you are going to Glastonbury this year is you might see these screens

near the finals and if you choose to use the rhinos then you'll be part

of an experiment which is literally putting the P into power. These are

displays which don't require a lot of power but a lucky few may be able

to charge their phones for a bit. It only after donating. Most of the P

used here comes from staff donors at the lab. His only good for the

microbes for an hour or so saw constant supplies needed. Although,

I think I'll hang on. Welcome to the week in Tech. It was the week that

Goober refounded customers for journeys taken near last Saturday

night's terror attacks after surging demand. Upload is launching a voice

controlled speaker. The comment section on Britney Spears's Insta

gram account has been used by Russian speaking hackers. If you

think this is a sensible way to go out, anyone with kids can tell you

what it is like trying to get play dough out of the carpet but Serbia

do not have a new gadget to tell you about for that.

This aims to help kids learn about light, sound and movement to play.

And finally, researchers at MIT have developed sensors for robotic arms

that aim to help bots grab things with the right amount of pressure.

The aim to make negotiating smaller objects possible as well as making

general household tasks easier to approach. This would be handy if one

day robot are to become ordinary household companions.

Around the world scientists are looking at different ways of

improving our quality-of-life Auster pierces alternate sources of power.

Soft robotics, and possibly in future bionic limbs. But in Italy's

liability at other things. They are looking at simulating

touch. Researchers are trying to merge

human physiology machine engineering. The team are working on

a bionic fingertip that is capable of detecting texture. The human

sense of touch is incredibly complex one. I don't even need to look at

these three pieces of plastic to sense the differences in the ridges.

How do you transfer that same sensitivity into a prosthetic hand?

Fingertips have a higher concentration thanks to 20,000 nerve

fibres on each finger. It registers textures its touches as

spikes. On-screen it may look simple but that is exactly the language

that our nervous system speaks as we touch objects, it sends nerve

impulses to the brain. The tiny subtle variations in how the skin

deforms as it is touched changes those impulses and how we perceive

texture. This capitalises on the natural

principle and so can be more effective as humans and animals in

general can now interact with the environment.

The professor and his team have already had some success. Dennis was

one of the first amputee to try out the bionic fingertip. The output

from the finger was directly connected to the healthy nerves in

his upper arm. I could tell the difference between the way it was

very rough and smooth. Yet, that was amazing. Since those first clinical

trial cup of years ago the team have been trying to increase the number

of textures that patients can feel. The experiments that were showing

now are strengthening the capability to tell silk from cotton, wool from

different kinds of materials. And in this way we can restore a more

natural sense of touch to the amputee that is wearing the press he

says. What is learnt it can be transferred

to other applications, for example a surgical robot can use this

technology to identify tumours which would feel different and texture to

healthy tissue. Another kind of application is for

rescue, so to allow robots to be present in the environment not only

to listen, but to add more sensors available when exploring and

environment. Think example of a nuclear disaster, so in the case of

underwater application the robot can go and touch and perceive the

environment based on the sensory feedback that you can have remotely

controlling the robot. Once this technology is mastered it

can be integrated into simple things like gloves so for instance, I could

be anywhere in the world, my husband back in New York can give me the

sensation of petting our cat and that would be transferred through

these actuators to me anywhere in the world. I want it right now.

I can't give you that at the moment but in the meantime how about a hug

from this chap? That's it for the short cut of kick from this week.

The full-length version is on IP right now. Next week we're going to

Los Angeles for the annual video games extravaganza. Is going to be

tweaking every thing that we seem. Follow us on Facebook. Thanks for

watching.