🦾 Wearables with moveable joints, getting energy from urine, US's first location-tracked AI chip

From Carnegie Mellon, researchers designed new wearable structures with a robust new algorithm that enables materials to move complexly, granting unprecedented control over how joints function in advanced mechanical systems.

They customized several for specific movement types and body locations. Innovations in design and programming could influence robotics, prosthetics, aerospace, and wearable technology.

Mechanical systems with tunable kinematics and stiffness are vital for applications in virtual haptics, productivity, and medical rehabilitation. Dive deeper into this Must-Read.

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🤖 Wearables with tunable stiffness mimic touch, adapt motion, and remember shape

Researchers built three devices to show how their new and improved wearables work:  

A wrist device can change its stiffness, helping control how freely the wrist moves. Another is a fingertip “thimble” that can switch between soft and firm settings, simulating the feel of different materials like gel or metal. The third is a wearable of several joints designed for the arm and hand, which can enhance touch feedback or assist with muscle training.

Their refined design framework determines optimal flexural rod placements for multiple motion modes. It integrates analytical modeling with finite element (FE) simulations to evaluate and refine performance, resulting in adaptable devices tailored to specific kinematic and structural requirements.

🧻 Scientists make green hydrogen from urine, cut energy use by 27% in wild breakthrough

We might have a limitless supply of green hydrogen in, brace yourselves, human urine.

Hydrogen is seen as one of the most promising clean energy sources of the future, and researchers have developed several ways to produce it from urea in human urine and wastewater.

They used a novel membrane-free system powered by a copper-based catalyst and pure urea. However, producing pure urea turned out to be energy-intensive and carbon-emitting, so they developed a second system that ran on actual urine, which was sustainable.

💻 US pushes world’s first location-tracked AI chip law to counter China threat

The U.S. has intensified its tech crackdown on China with a new legislative push to tighten control over where advanced AI chips end up.

The move adds a new front in the long-simmering U.S.-China tech war, which has seen sweeping export bans, corporate compliance overhauls, and retaliatory restrictions as both nations vie for supremacy in artificial intelligence and chipmaking.

“My Chips Security Act will prevent American chips from falling into the hands of adversaries like Communist China.” So, now what?

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