RoboClaw Clock takes time to show time.

Stonehenge - A Robotic Digital Clock uses its claws to arrange cards to show time.

It uses a CrustCrawler Smart Arm and a Parallax Propeller chip. There are a total of 14 cards. Each card has two digits with one on each side. The software planner determines which card and which side is needed to display the time and then sends the necessary movement commands to the arm.

For more info head over to Norris Labs .

Have a look at the video of StoneHemge - the Robotic Clock">

Stonehenge is named for the way the cards are arranged around the bot ’s claw(actually it is only a claw) like the Stonehenge’s rocks. The bot slowly but surely changes the cards every minute to update the time on display. Because it takes a long time to change cards it keeps track and might have to skip a minute for example when shifting from 12:59 to 01:00.

This would involve changing all the 4 cards on display, so it would take a lot of time, see the video to see what I mean.

Mosquito needle for painless injections!!

Indian IIT professor Suman Chakraborty (from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur) and Kazuyoshi Tsuchiya of Tokai University in Kanagawa have developed a painless microneedle that can be used medically.

It can be used for giving painless drug injections, to take blood for testing and forthings like a wristwatch-type diabetic glucose monitor.

A female mosquito sucks human blood by contractng and relaxing some muscles in its long needle-like thingie called proboscis. This creates suction (or negative pressure) that draws blood into its mouthparts. Contrary to popular belief, a mosquito bite does not hurt. It is the anticoagulant saliva that the creature injects to stop your blood clotting that causes inflammation and pain.

In the new design, sucking action is provided by a micro electromechanical pump, which works using a piezoelectric actuator attached to the needle.

In contrast to previous microneedles, which were made of silicon dioxide, the new device is robust because it is made of stronger titanium and related alloys, which dramatically reduces the risk of it snapping during injections.

The needle is also strong enough to penetrate as far as 3 millimetres into skin and reach capillary blood vessels.

Its size compared to earlier models also means that surface tension effects are exploited further, and the same capillary flow that draws water up into trees helps draw blood into the microneedle.

The researchers have calculated that their needle can extract 5 microlitres of blood per second. This volume is sufficient for measuring blood-sugar levels in diabetics using a glucose sensor that can be attached to the needle in a “wristwatch” design.