Soft, growing vine robots are well-suited for exploring cluttered, unknown environments, and are theorized to be performant during structural collapse incidents caused by earthquakes, fires, explosions, and material flaws. These vine robots grow from the tip, enabling them to navigate rubble-filled passageways easily. State-of-the-art vine robots have been tested in archaeological and other field settings, but their translational capabilities to urban search and rescue (USAR) are not well understood. To this end, we present a set of experiments designed to test the limits of a vine robot system, the Soft Pathfinding Robotic Observation Unit (SPROUT), operating in an engineered collapsed structure. Our testing is driven by a taxonomy of difficulty derived from the challenges USAR crews face navigating void spaces and their associated hazards. Initial experiments explore the viability of the vine robot form factor, both ideal and implemented, as well as the control and sensorization of the system. A secondary set of experiments applies domain-specific design improvements to increase the portability and reliability of the system. SPROUT can grow through tight apertures, around corners, and into void spaces, but requires additional development in sensorization to improve control and situational awareness.

Fecal incontinence (FI) is a significant health issue with various underlying causes. Research in this field is limited by social stigma and the lack of effective replication models. To address these challenges, we developed a sophisticated rectal simulator that integrates power, control, and data acquisition systems with soft pouch actuators. The system comprises four key subsystems: mechanical, electrical, pneumatic, and control and data acquisition. The mechanical subsystem utilizes common materials such as aluminum frames, wooden boards, and compact structural components to facilitate the installation and adjustment of electrical and control components. The electrical subsystem supplies power to regulators and sensors. The pneumatic system provides compressed air to actuators, enabling the simulation of FI. The control and data acquisition subsystem collects pressure data and regulates actuator movement. This comprehensive approach allows the robot to accurately replicate human defecation, managing various feces types including liquid, solid, and extremely solid. This innovation enhances our understanding of defecation and holds potential for advancing quality-of-life devices related to this condition.

Take a gander at these Home Depot Black Friday deals from the comfort of your living room without having to line up at the gates to do battle with the masses in the store. Winter means, for more of us than not, spending a lot more time at home than we'd otherwise choose to spend. Vacations are a fine remedy, sure, but who has money to travel all season long? Make home a pleasant place to be, inside and outside, with these deals on equipment for your garage, backyard, and home, and you won't want to leave. WIRED tests products year-round and handpicked these deals based on the actual discounts, not just the discounts retailers claim to offer. Products that are sold out or no longer discounted as of publishing will be crossed out . We'll update this guide through November.

Take a gander at these early Home Depot Black Friday deals and get a lead on the masses who'll be ready to crowd the digital gates before the Thanksgiving turkey even gets cold. Winter means, for more of us than not, spending a lot more time at home than we'd otherwise choose to spend. Vacations are a fine remedy, sure, but who has money to travel all season long? Make home a pleasant place to be, inside and outside, with these deals on equipment for your garage, backyard, and home, and you won't want to leave. WIRED tests products year-round and handpicked these deals based on the actual discounts, not just the discounts retailers claim to offer.

Winter means, for more of us than not, spending a lot more time at home than we'd otherwise choose to spend. Vacations are a fine remedy, sure, but who has money to travel all season long? Make home a pleasant place to be, inside and outside, with these deals on equipment for your garage, backyard, and home, and you won't want to leave. WIRED tests products year-round and handpicked these deals based on the actual discounts, not just the discounts retailers claim to offer. Products that are sold out or no longer discounted as of publishing will be crossed out .

Everything in this small, nondescript datacentre comes in singles. There's one server, one cooling unit, and one cardinal rule: stay within thermal guidelines. It's into this setting that TELUS released an AI agent tasked with cooling the room as efficiently as possible, and gave it virtual carte blanche to figure out how. This was the first real-world test in TELUS' Energy Optimization System Project (EOS), a pilot in which a reinforcement learning agent took control of a real physical system in order to teach itself how to best operate it. Two months prior, that same agent had showed it could increase energy efficiency by 2%-15% in a simulator, thanks in large part to a series of its own ingenious innovations.

The machines save lives, but because they come in direct contact with blood, the patient has to be on blood thinners to avoid clots that gum up the works. The soft robotic pump doesn't come into contact with blood. The thin sleeve slips over the outside of the heart, twisting and contracting to mimic the muscle's natural movements. To test it, the researchers induced cardiac arrest in six pigs, then used the sleeve to get their hearts pumping blood again for 15 minutes or more. That's promising news, but several challenges lie ahead.