Robotics, 3-D Printing, Drones Lead Tech Innovations_美文

Robotics, 3-D Printing, Drones Lead Tech Innovations

"We use urban construction waste, mine tailings and urban solid wastes as raw materials," said Ma, whose company is headquartered in Shanghai. "We sort them by category and we transform them into a special printing ink."

Robots step forward

Robots also gained new ground, serving as human-like receptionists and robotic barmen or providing exoskeletons that help paralyzed people walk again.

Cheng-Hua Wu, an inventor for Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute, touted the Walking Assistive Exoskeleton Robot as a potential boon to people with severe spinal cord injury, for instance.

Certain patients paralyzed from the chest down "are able to use our robot to stand, walk and sit down," Cheng-hua said. The device, made of aluminum and carbon fiber, weighs 20 kilograms (44 pounds).

Mind-controlled prostheses continue to promise great help for amputees.

The Icelandic firm Ossur introduced a bionic prosthetic leg that's paired with a tiny sensor placed in residual tissue. The sensor conducts electrical impulses from the amputee's brain to the bionic leg, allowing a more natural gait.

"We put sensors into the muscles, and the muscles would pick up the signals, and the signals move their way into the prosthetics, and then the prosthetics react as your brain wants," said Thorvaldur Ingvarsson, an orthopedic surgeon and Ossur's research director.