[HN Gopher] Tiny rubber spheres used to make a programmable fluid
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       Tiny rubber spheres used to make a programmable fluid
        
       Author : nobody9999
       Score  : 39 points
       Date   : 2024-04-25 06:15 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
        
       | nobody9999 wrote:
       | From TFA:
       | 
       | ""I did my PhD in France on making a spherical shell swim. To
       | make it swim, we were making it collapse. It moved like a
       | [inverted] jellyfish," says Adel Djellouli, a researcher at
       | Bertoldi Group, Harvard University, and the lead author of the
       | study. "I told my boss, 'hey, what if I put this sphere in a
       | syringe and increase the pressure?' He said it was not an
       | interesting idea and that this wouldn't do anything," Djellouli
       | claims. But a few years and a couple of rejections later,
       | Djellouli met Benjamin Gorissen, a professor of mechanical
       | engineering at the University of Leuven, Belgium, who shared his
       | interests. "I could do the experiments, he could do the
       | simulations, so we thought we could propose something together,"
       | Djellouli says. Thus, Djellouli's rubber sphere finally got into
       | the syringe. And results were quite unexpected."
       | 
       | The paper discussed in the Ars piece can be found here[0].
       | 
       | [0]
       | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07163-z.epdf?shar...
        
         | failrate wrote:
         | "I told my boss, 'hey, what if I put this sphere in a syringe
         | and increase the pressure?' He said it was not an interesting
         | idea and that this wouldn't do anything," Djellouli claims."
         | 
         | If someone tells you that your line of research is
         | uninteresting, just do the research anyway.
        
           | jebarker wrote:
           | Seconded. More than once I've been talked out of pursuing a
           | line of research only to see someone else publish decent
           | results on the same thing a couple of years later.
        
           | wizzwizz4 wrote:
           | If someone tells you that your line of research is
           | uninteresting, that means _results would be surprising_ -
           | i.e., that 's a sign that it _is_ interesting. (Unless they
           | 've tried it and _empirically found_ that it 's
           | "uninteresting" - which is somewhat interesting in itself,
           | even if it's not sexy enough for today's academia.)
        
           | shepardrtc wrote:
           | > If someone tells you that your line of research is
           | uninteresting, just do the research anyway.
           | 
           | My graduate advisor said that to me and put me on some other
           | stuff he wanted to work on. It really took the wind out of my
           | sails, and I never really had the passion for the new work
           | that I did for my original idea.
           | 
           | My final year he got a new PhD student and let her work on
           | the idea. She was quite successful in that area. He never
           | said anything to me about it.
           | 
           | TLDR if you have an idea you're passionate about it, ignore
           | the haters and just do it. Even if it doesn't succeed, you'll
           | have the satisfaction of knowing you pursued something YOU
           | found interesting.
        
       | hillpress wrote:
       | > "You can tune pressure at which the spheres activate by
       | changing their radius and thickness of their walls.
       | 
       | I immediately thought this.
       | 
       | The whole thing seems like such an intuitive idea. I really like
       | the idea of mixing sizes to induce multiple pressure "plateaus".
       | 
       | Also the drama of its inception is delectable.
       | 
       | The paper linked in another comment has some excellent visual
       | aides. Wish we had a video.
        
         | luma wrote:
         | The paper's graphs show a hysteresis that looks a lot like many
         | semiconductor curves. What a neat technology, this might make
         | for some interesting hydraulic control solutions.
        
       | karma_pharmer wrote:
       | The paper and videos are here:
       | 
       | https://bertoldi.seas.harvard.edu/publications/shell-bucklin...
       | 
       | Note that this is not "gripper" like "five-fingered robot hand".
       | A better description might be "vise" (like the kind in a
       | woodworking shop). The egg gets pressed between two linear
       | actuators each with one degree of freedom.
        
       | sideshowb wrote:
       | So this other guy: he's a Terminator like you, right?
       | 
       | Not like me. A T-1000, advanced prototype.
       | 
       | You mean more advanced than you are?
       | 
       | Yes. A mimetic polyalloy.
       | 
       | What the hell does that mean?
       | 
       | Tiny rubber spheres.
        
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