{"id":2794,"date":"2017-02-05T14:00:21","date_gmt":"2017-02-05T14:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/?p=2794"},"modified":"2017-02-05T14:15:07","modified_gmt":"2017-02-05T14:15:07","slug":"gel-based-robots-can-catch-live-fish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/2017\/02\/05\/gel-based-robots-can-catch-live-fish\/","title":{"rendered":"These gel-based robots can catch live fish"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Engineers have fabricated transparent gel-based robots that move when water is pumped in and out of them and can perform tasks like grabbing and releasing a live fish.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>According to the results &#8212; published in the journal Nature Communications &#8212; these robots can also perform fast and forceful tasks like kicking a ball underwater.<\/p>\n<p>The robots are made entirely of hydrogel &#8212; a tough, rubbery, nearly transparent material that&#8217;s composed mostly of water.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Hydrogels are soft, wet, biocompatible and can form more friendly interfaces with human organs,&#8221; said Xuanhe Zhao, associate professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.<\/p>\n<p>Each robot is an assemblage of hollow, precisely designed hydrogel structures, connected to rubbery tubes.<\/p>\n<p>When the researchers pump water into the hydrogel robots, the structures quickly inflate in orientations that enable the bots to curl up or stretch out.<\/p>\n<p>Since the robots are powered by and made almost entirely of water, they have similar visual and acoustic properties to water.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers propose that these robots, if designed for underwater applications, may be virtually invisible.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are actively collaborating with medical groups to translate this system into soft manipulators such as hydrogel &#8216;hands,&#8217; which could potentially apply more gentle manipulations to tissues and organs in surgical operations,&#8221; Zhao added.\u2014IANS<\/p>\n<p>Image: YouTube<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Engineers have fabricated transparent gel-based robots that move when water is pumped in and out of them and can perform tasks like grabbing and releasing a live fish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":2795,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[43],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2794"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2794"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2806,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2794\/revisions\/2806"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}