Axis Ai

Smartflower is the world’s only solar solution to use an all-in-one, sculptural design and intelligent solution to produce clean, sustainable energy for your home, car, or business. Sunflowers open, close and follow the sun for optimal energy conversion, we figured solar panels should too. Smartflower simplifies the solar experience. In just hours, your Smartflower can be delivered, installed, and connected to your home, providing clean energy from one simple, stand-alone device.  Smartflower is like no other. Standing as a monument to iconic design, the sculptural form moves throughout the day, dynamically interacting with light and shadow. You’ll never have to choose between beauty and performance again.  Watch on YouTube SmartFlower uses advanced robotics and automation to intelligently track the sun, making up to 40% more energy than traditional stationary solar panels. In addition, every day at sunset, Smartflower will automatically fold up and clean itself to maintain pe...

The students, all members of the Southampton University Human Powered Aircraft Society (SUHPA) and led by Engineering student Charles Dhenin, built their aircraft Lazarus which flew for the longest time in the Formula Flight competition, run by the Royal Aeronautical Society’s Human Powered Flight Group.  Watch on YouTube The event challenges teams to design, build and fly their own human powered aircraft. The aircraft has to be a new design, be powered exclusively by the muscle power of the pilot, be heavier than air, fly for more than five seconds and finish in good condition so no crash landings are allowed.  The Southampton team built their aircraft mostly from XPS foam, carbon fibre and balsa wood. The COVID-19 pandemic slowed them down a bit, but eventually they finished Lazarus and made their maiden flight in June 2021.

  BionicKangaroo Efficient jump kinematics with energy recovery New drive concepts and forms of movement have always played an important role in the Bionic Learning Network. That's why we took a close look at the kangaroo and its unique movement and implemented it technically with the BionicKangaroo. Like its natural role model, it can regain energy during jumping, store it in its Achilles tendon and reapply it efficiently in the next jump.  Watch on YouTube The important function of the natural Achilles tendon is performed by an elastic rubber band. It is attached to the rear part of the foot and parallel to a pneumatic cylinder on the knee joint, which triggers the jump. The artificial tendon cushions the jump during landing, absorbs the kinetic energy and releases it for the next jump – with the same technique as the natural kangaroo. Stable and dynamic jumping behavior Condition monitoring and precise control and regulation technology ensure stability during jumps and land...

Esper Bionics has developed a prosthetic arm with intuitive self-learning technology that can predict intended movement faster than similar prosthetics.  Watch on YouTube Esper Hand uses an electromyography-based brain-computer interface (BCI) a computer-based technology system that gathers brain activity or information to trigger movement.When the wearer wants to control the hand, their brain sends impulses to specific muscles to activate them. Over 30 non-invasive sensors that connect the stump socket to the wearer's skin pick up on this muscle activity or "electrical cues" and relay the information to trigger an action in the hand. BCIs are often used by paralysis patients to control machines with just their thoughts.  Esper Hand has five movable digits and can rotate and grip in multiple ways, allowing the wearer to perform everyday tasks such as opening a bottle, driving a car, using kitchen utensils or tapping a phone screen. The 380-gram arm is made from a combinat...

Using electric fields to manipulate droplets on a surface could enable high-volume, low-cost biology experiments. MIT researchers have developed hardware that uses electric fields to move droplets of chemical or biological solutions around a surface, mixing them in ways that could be used to test thousands of reactions in parallel. The researchers view their system as an alternative to the microfluidic devices now commonly used in biological research, in which biological solutions are pumped through microscopic channels connected by mechanical valves. The new approach, which moves solutions around in computationally prescribed patterns, could enable experiments to be conducted more efficiently, cost-effectively, and at larger scales.  Watch on YouTube With his new system thousands of droplets could be deposited on the surface of his device, and they would automatically move around to carry out biological experiments. The system includes software that allows users to describe, at a ...