Bird-Repelling Drone Imitates Predators
Birds can be quite pesky. They peck at your garden veggies, harass your dog, and poop on your clean patio furniture. Thankfully, a new drone is here to the rescue.
Designed to look like a bird of prey, the ProHawk UAV can be flown with a handheld remote control or be programmed to autonomously fly over a property while emitting predatory cries.
Spermbots Could Improve Fertility Treatments
Researchers at the Dresden Institute for Integrative Nanosciences in Germany are working on an unorthodox solution to help those having trouble conceiving. The team has demonstrated sets of motorized “spermbots” that can give sperm that don’t swim well an extra boost to the egg.
The spermbots are guided by magnetic fields, and the team has developed small, metal-coated polymer helices that capture sperm from behind, wrap their tails in a spinning magnetic corkscrew, and propel them forward at the head.
Slicing, Dicing Robot Will Dismantle Fukushima
This week Toshiba revealed a new camera-covered, crane-like scavenger robot. Designed to help clean-up the Fukushima Power Plant nearly five years after the nuclear meltdown, these robots use two arms to grab and chop-up whatever lays in their path.
Namely though, these scavenger bots will be primarily used to dispose of fuel-rod assemblies, which previously supplied the reactor’s fuel.
