【推荐1】Have you ever lost something in a hard-to-reach space, like behind a couch or a cupboard? Wouldn’t it be nice to just be able to squeeze (挤) in and out? New innovations in the field of robotics will soon be able to make this nice idea into a reality.

In a study published on Jan 25 in the science journal Matter, engineers from The Chinese University of Hong Kong and Carnegie Mellon University in the US have developed small robots that can quickly change back and forth from liquid to solid states.

According to the website Mashable, the scientists were inspired by sea cucumbers (海参). They are able to change the stiffness (僵硬度) of their body or reduce the potential for physical damage. The robots in the study were made from gallium, a soft metal with a low melting point of 30℃. The scientists then used changes in the magnetic field to control the magnetic particles (粒子) inside the gallium material to provide heat. This heat then allowed the robots to change between solid and liquid states as well as to move around.

As the website Tech Xplore pointed out, other similar materials require external heat sources such as heat guns and electrical currents to induce (触发) a change of states; but now, the robots can use a heat source inside itself to change states independently.

During the robots’ experimental trials, the scientists conducted a number of tests. These tests included having the robots melt into liquid and reform to escape a prison-like cage. The robot is also able to build and repair hard-to-reach circuits (电路). The robots’ ability to switch between states of matter allows for a number of possible uses and advancements in different fields, such as he biomedical and circuit assembly (组装) industries.

Still, in the words of senior author Carmel Majidi at Carnegie Mellon University, for now these are all just “proofs of concept” which show the abilities of these new kinds of robots.

Have you ever had a wonderful idea and thought it would make a great invention, but didn’t know what to do next?    1    They will help you make your dreams come true and become a famous inventor. The first thing that you should do is do some research on the Internet to see if anyone else has invented it. If not, you should search through the US Patent (专利) information to see if a patent was ever created for your type of invention.    2    The easiest thing to do is working with a company that can help you to make your dreams a reality. It can help you present your ideas and get your product to the right companies. One company that is very reputable (声誉好的) is “Lambert and Lambert in Minnesota”.    3    If they think your product is marketable (有销路的), they will help you to get it to the right company.Call the company and make an appointment. You will want to bring in a model of your invention and a complete description of your ideas.    4    Then when you meet with them, you can present it and they will tell you how marketable it is. If they decide to help you, they will work to present it to different companies and help you to go to the next step. Once your invention has been sold to a large company, get ready to get the benefits of becoming the next great inventor.    5    But the benefits are worth the wait.

【推荐3】Imagine if there were a robotic fish that filtered microplastic out of the water as it swam. Well, now there is one, and it’s the physical version of the winning concept in the first-ever Natural Robotics Contest.

Announced this May, the University of Surrey’s Natural Robots Contest invited members of the public to give their concepts for animal—or plant-inspired robots capable of performing activities that would help the world.

Plans called for experts from various British and European research centers to select what they thought was the best concept, which would then be made into a real robot. Engineers would proceed to further develop the technology.

The winning concept turned out to be the plastic-collecting Robo-fish, designed by chemistry student Eleanor Mackintosh—who is a University of Surrey student. Mackintosh said, “Fish’s gills are an incredible mechanism in nature that are specialized to filter oxygen into the bloodstream—so I adapted my design from that, with the purpose of dealing with the plastic pollution in the water.”

The robot swims by moving its tail, holding its mouth wide open to-collect water and microplastics in its belly as it does so. Once that cavity is full, the robot closes its mouth, opens its gills, and pushes the water out through. A fine net attached to the gill flaps allows the water to pass through, but captures the microplastic.

In its current physical form, the 50-cm-long Robo-fish collects microplastic as small as 2 millimeters. It also uses sensors to monitor underwater environment, plus it tracks its movements within the water.

Future robots could capture much smaller particles. Other possible improvements include a faster body shape, a more powerful tail, and the ability to swim autonomously.

【推荐1】From service robots in virtual stands to 5G applications displayed in cloud booths (展 台), several innovations stood out at the 2020 China International Fair for Trade in Services （CIFTIS）, which was held from Sept 4 to 9 in Beijing. Themed "Global Services, Shared Prosperity", the event has presented many cutting-edge technologies. Let's take a look.

Al-powered garbage-sorting robot

It can detect and sort the garbage on the conveyor belt and then throw it into different dustbins. For example, it will put plastic bottles and containers into recyclable dustbins. With advanced technologies such as cloud computing and robot automation, the robot can sort through garbage with an accuracy of 98 percent, which will significantly reduce operating costs and improve efficiency.

Bionic (仿生的)machine shark

A dark gray, life-size "shark", was also displayed at CIFTIS. This bionic shark can move forward by imitating the swinging motion of fish tails. It has a maximum speed of six knots （about 11 kilometers per hour）, which is much faster than the average speed of about two knots of other bionic submersible (潜水的)vehicles. It is equipped with lighting, a camera system and imaging sonar (声呐),which can be used for underwater searches, seafloor mapping and underwater shooting.

Driver fatigue (疲劳)warning system

A warning system to prevent people from falling asleep while driving was introduced at the fair. It can judge whether the driver is sleepy by monitoring how long the driver's eyes close or if his or her head drops. If the driver enters a state of fatigue, the system will immediately sound an alarm until the driver's eyes reopen and he or she starts to blink at a normal frequency. In the future, other dangerous driving behaviors, such as not wearing a seat belt and making phone calls while driving, might also be added into this warning system.

【推荐2】Online Learning’s Big Issue

Supporters of education technology have made remarkable promises over the past two decades that by 2019, hall of all secondary school courses would be online; videos and practice problems can let students learn mathematics at their own pace, or that typical students left alone with internet-connected computers can learn anything without the help of schools or teachers.

Then in 2020, people around the world were forced to turn to online learning as the coronavirus pandemic shut down schools serving more than 1 billion students. It was education technology’s big moment, but for many students and families, remote learning has been a disappointment. When the world needs it most, why has education technology seemed so dull?

Educational software has a long history, but throughout this history there have been two major challenges. The first is that most people depend on human connection to maintain their motivation. When a student closes their laptop in frustration in a classroom, someone can see it and respond. When the same thing happens while using an education technology product, human connections are shut down with it. Well-designed online learning environments can encourage meaningful relationships, but in practice, many online students struggle to stay focused.

The second challenge is that the mapping out of different courses are complex. On any given day in a school, one teacher may introduce a new sound-letter mapping in phonics, another finish a unit on plate tectonics (板块构造学), and a third facilitate a seminar on Hamlet. In a traditional classroom setting, a teacher could simply walk down the hall straight into a new classroom and teach an entirely different subject matter. But for every new curriculum area for education technology, new content, tools, resources and assessments need to be developed.

Assessments are also a thorny challenge. In some domains, like mathematics and computer science, education technology can instantly detect when a student solves a problem or creates a correctly functioning computer program. We can reward students for getting answers correct, push them towards resources when they get things wrong, and create the feedback loops of instruction, assessment and repetition that good learning requires.

Unfortunately, the same approach doesn’t work so well in other areas. We can ask students to calculate how far a tectonic plate might move given a certain speed and time and computers involved would easily be able to instantly evaluate a correct numerical answer. But if we ask students to write a paragraph that explains how plate tectonics work, computers can’t reliably identify correct, partially correct and incorrect responses. Computers cannot reliably evaluate how humans reason from evidence, and reasoning from evidence is the very core of schooling.

Education technology has long promised to transform education, but at best, the field has developed individual tools for inches of the curriculum. For large areas of school learning, we don’t have online tools or resources that are any better than a printed textbook. For most teachers, the road to more effective teaching with technology looks less like a transformation, and more like tinkering: a slow and steady process towards identifying the right tool or approach for particular students in a particular context.