Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Nano Battery & Terminator

A couple here from my brother:

Nano-batteries


Although they don't necessarily follow Moore's law, batteries have still gotten smaller and more efficient as the years pass. The current go-to power cell of choice is the lithium-ion battery. It's already quite small as it is, but some scientists think it can get even smaller. How small? Try nanometers.

Self-repairing Robots.


Well, it looks like this is one aspect of fictional robotics that's starting to catch up with reality. Researchers at Arizona State designed a system that lets synthetics recreate the natural healing process found in organics. It uses shape-memory or mimetic polymers embedded with a network of fiber optics. The network senses any damage to the system, then delivers heat to the "wounded" area to repair it.

7 comments:

Neal Asher said...

And a little side note on exoskeletons ... self-contained power supply?

http://tinyurl.com/22pzax2

Ryan said...

The technology seems to be coming along in leaps and bounds, though lockheedmartin havent said how long this exoskeleton's power supply lasts.

Neal Asher said...

Mmm, I would have loved to have been in the audience for these talks: http://tinyurl.com/274by2w

It'll come, Ryan. If you google new battery developments - or super-capacitors - you find there's a hell of a lot of work going on.

Conan the Librarian™ said...

Shipstones here we come.

Ryan said...

It would be brilliant to have the majority of things you own constructed with some self-healing inbuilt. Phone screen cracked? Car dented? clothes ripped? computer busted? just pop the kettle on and read a book for a few hours then try again with your newly regenerated possessions.

On the note of the battery it occurs to me that it could be considered a sort of nanofactory build material. In SF we read about machines capable of building matter atom by atom, molecule by molecule. This is constructed atom by atom with an AFM. Scale it up and who knows what we will get? (preferably nothing egg like with a predisposition towards genocide...)

Jebel Krong said...

i did see an application of the self-repair fluid for phone screens actually, ryan. however i guess it's easier to use gorilla glass than implement that cheaply...

Jono said...

I'm busy re-reading Alastair Reynolds Revelation Space Series. What's the possibility of your 'self repair' car or mobile catching the melding plague. Probably only become a problem when all the phone repair and panel-beaters close due to no customers...