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Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Invisibility


When talking about invisibility, the first thing we can think of are Hollow man or something from the James Bond movies. Invisibility is no longer impossible as scientist have figure out a way that would one day make objects invisible. With the use of meta material, light can be bend around the object allowing light to pass through as if the object is not there. Researchers from Duke University have proven that objects can be invisible by using metamaterial as the shield. However it is not the true invisibily as it is a two dimensions cloaking and at microwave frequencies only. Visible light that human and animal perceive are at a much higher frequencies.

Hence Allan Greenleaf and his collegue from the University of Rochester have figure out a way to build a device which is able to make objects travelling through the device invisible. The device would cloak in three dimensions. It is like a electromagnetic wormhole which disconnect the object in the cylinder from the outside world electromagnetically. It would render the frequencies of light and causes it to blend into the surrounding. However the range of frequencies the device can render depends on what metamaterials have been produced. Thus the range of frequencies is limited.

It would still be useful in various application such as to neutralize the magnetic fields produced by MRI machine.

However the development of the device would still be a thing decades from now. But it has form a basis for the invisibilty cloak.

Resource:
photo courtesy of
Matti Lassas, Helsinki University of Technology

Robocon 2008



Robocon or Robot Contest is an anual event for robot competition which representitive from every country will send their own made robot to compete in the contest. Higher education institutions in every country especially will participate the contest The is organised by Asia - Pasific Broadcasting Union. Every year there will be a new theme and objective. The 2008 Robocon will be held in Pune, India. The theme for 2008 Robocon is Govinda. The game play is easy where the team that manage to held all the cheese will be considered the winner by Govinda. The team that manage to score the highest marks will be the winner for the contest.

(one of the example of robot used in Robocon)

It requires collaboration between the manual robot and the automated robots. For example in order for the automated robot to score the center cheese cube it needs the help of the manual robot to held to a certain level so that the automated robot can reach the cheese cube. However that is not the only way for the automated robot to reach the cheese cube.

As usual there will be rules and regulations for each team to comply. Robocon 2008 is set to pose more challenge for the participants


Resource : http://www.roboconindia.com/downloads/ABU%20ROBOCON%202008%20Rule%20book%2015%20th%20OCTOBER%202007%20Update.pdf, University Tun Hussien Onn

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