Magnets. You knew they were cool, but you didn't know how cool. Until now.
The clever monkeys at the University of Waterloo (Ontario) have created a flying micro-robot, complete with moveable pincers and built-in soft focus imaging (hey, even micro-robots are afraid of wrinkles these days).
Professor Mir Behrad Khamesee & team mojo around with magnetic fields on three axes to levitate and move the robot, who weighs in at around three-hundredths of an ounce (Dear Hollywood, please stop the body image madness!!!).
In the words of Prof MBK hisself:
"We develop a focal point of a magnetic field in space, which the micro-robot hangs on," Khamesee said. "By changing the location of the focal point (through current control in several coils), the micro-robot is consequently moved."
That kind of talk recharges my batteries. Get the full microbot goss at Cnet.
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