Wound and Gadget Coating from Covalon

New skin

Just a few days ago I was in the food store (it’s called something else but I forget what) and I saw boxes of bandaids that have silver in them. At first I thought it was some weird fad, you know like Chia-Pets, but it turns out that silver is a natural antimicrobial. I did a little searching around and discovered that you can get all sorts of things with silver in them, shits, socks being the most common. The ‘wound dressings’ (Band-Aid is a trademark after all and this stuff can be used to cover tools as well) were the coolest by far.

The Silver Collagen Antimicrobial Gel Sheet is a hydrated denatured porcine collagen produced by polymerization. It maintains a moist environment at the wound surface that aids in granulation tissue formation, epithelialization, and enables healing to occur at a rapid rate. The sustained release of ionic silver into the wound creates an effective barrier to fungal penetration and is effective as a method to reduce infection of partial and full thickness wounds.

Wound and Gadget Coating from Covalon

antimicrobial, silver, wound, medical

Flocking Bots

Flock

I love it. Off the shelf parts and clever software builds a swarm of flying robots.

For their proof of concept, the researchers are using lightweight $69 Proxflyer Bladerunner toy helicopters equipped with gumstix processors — tiny self-contained computers weighing 8 grams (0.28 ounces), but packing enough power to run the Linux 2.6 kernel and communicate over a built-in Bluetooth module.
The coaxial Bladerunner weighs only 50 grams (1.8 ounces) and is held aloft by two rotors, one atop the other, spinning in opposite directions to achieve a stable, insect-like flight. It’s sold as a remote-control toy, but after adding the gumstix and a downward-facing video camera, the Essex University researchers have already turned one of the choppers into what they describe as the world’s smallest flying web server.

Linux Powers Airborne Bots

swarm, linux, air, computer,

Nanoflyer

Nanoflyer

I thought that I had seen some small R/C flying machines before but this one is smaller than all of them. The flight time is low, but then again where the heck would a bigger battery go?

The 2.7 grams Nanoflyer is by far the smallest and lightest electric powered
contra-rotating coaxial-rotor RC helicopter ever built. It is battery powered and it
uses the Proxflyer concept to give it inherent stability. It is built to test how small
helicopters that may use the passively stable Proxflyer rotor concept.

Key specifications, components and materials used to build the small Nanoflyer:

Rotor: 85 mm (2 contra rotating 4-bladed rotors)
Carbon rod 0.3mm and 0.5 mm from WES-Technik
Aramid 30 g/m2 fabric from CST
Airframe: 80 mm long, 0.08 mm carbon plate, 0.3mm rod
Brass bearings 0.7 mm from Didel
Motors (x2): 4 x 8 mm, 28 ohm from Didel
Battery: 1 x 3.7 V, 20 mAh Kokam cell
Control: 2 channels IR control with 2x ESC
Yaw control by differential speed of rotors
C.G. trimed forward for horizontal flight
2.7 grams (incl. battery and control)
Weight: 2.7 grams (incl. battery and control)
Flight time: Up to 1 minute, (0.5 minute continues)

Nanoflyer

mini, helecopter, R/C, cool