Advanced Invention

TOKYO (AFP) - Japanese researchers say they have developed a rubber that is able to conduct electricity well, paving the way for robots with stretchable “e-skin” that can feel heat and pressure like humans.

The material is the first in the world to solve the problems faced by metals — which are conductive but do not stretch — and rubber, which hardly transmits electricity, according to the team at the University of Tokyo.

The new technology is flexible like ordinary rubber but boasts conductivity some 570 times as high as commercially available rubbers filled with carbon particles, said the team led by Takao Someya at the university’s School of Engineering.

Scientists envision ‘bots working intelligently while exploring distant worlds

EVE, otherwise known as the Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator, represents an intelligent probe sent to an abandoned Earth in the film “WALL-E.”

A spaceship descends with a thunderous roar and deposits a futuristic probe before taking off again. The Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator (EVE) soon activates and begins flying around, scanning the barren surface for signs of life.

A growing cloud of trash threatens space tourism and has experts scrambling to clear the mess

Robots could gain momentum to change orbit by swinging weighted tethers like a discus thrower does. This would move them to large pieces of old debris, to which they would attach Terminator Tethers

Along with satellites and space stations, Earth is surrounded by tens of millions of pieces of floating space debris. Like any landfill, the trash is diverse, ranging from dead satellites to castaway rocket parts to flecks of paint. On average, over the past 40 years, one piece of space junk has fallen to Earth every day.