Georgia Institute of Technology
US researches have developed a robot that gets about with a pair of flipper-like arms. By recording FlipperBot's adventures using a high-speed camera, the researchers are gaining understanding about the mechanics of traversing "complex surfaces" such as sand. Read More
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Atlanta's Emory University have developed microneedles less than a millimeter in length that can deliver drug molecules and particles to the region in the back of eye. The new technology provides an alternative to current methods which are either invasive, with drugs being injected into the center of the eye, or based on eyedrops, which are limited in their effectiveness. Read More
New tech allows quadriplegics to discreetly control wheelchairs using their tongues
For those unfortunate enough to suffer from severe spinal cord injuries, the tongue is often the only extremity still under their control. To take advantage of this fact, engineers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed what they call the Tongue Drive System (TDS), a wireless, wearable device that allows the user to operate computers and control electric wheelchairs with movements of the tongue. The latest iteration, which resembles a sensor-studded dental retainer, is controlled by a tongue-mounted magnet and promises its users a welcome new level of autonomy with both communication and transportation. Read More
For the past several years, scientists from around the world have been engaged in the development of nanogenerators – tiny piezoelectric devices capable of generating electricity by harnessing minute naturally-occurring movements, such as the shifting of clothing or even the beating of a person's heart. So far, while they may have worked in principle, few if any of the devices have been able to generate enough of a current to make them practical for use in consumer products. Now, however, scientists from the Georgia Institute of Technology are claiming to have created "the world's first practical nanogenerator." Read More
Having crashed through the petaflop barrier of a thousand trillion calculations per second back in June, scientists are continuing work into achieving the next benchmark in supercomputer performance - exascale computing. Georgia Institute of Technology's Professor Karsten Schwan is one of two scientists working in the field to receive a 2008 HP Labs Innovation Research Award to further research into solving the problems thrown-up by computing on this scale. Read More
February 22, 2005 Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are one step closer to someday matching, and possibly surpassing, their human-piloted counterparts, thanks to the successful completion of a project at Georgia Tech. The project showed that Gatech's GT Max rotary wing UAV is able to learn as it flies, manoeuvre aggressively and automatically plan a route through obstacles thanks to its Open Control Platform system. Researchers from several partner institutions and organizations have helped to successfully build, test and fly GTMax, with capabilities of flight control fault identification and reconfiguration, adaptive control and agile manoeuvring - all operating on a single vehicle and under a single software architecture. Read More
