NEW: A working tractor beam made of sound

Credit: Image courtesy of Asier Marzo, Bruce Drinkwater and Sriram Subramanian copyright 2015

A team of researchers from the Universities of Bristol and Sussex in 
collaboration with Ultrahaptics has built a novel sonic tractor beam
that can lift and move objects using sound waves.
You may not have considered using sound to create a tractor beam, but researchers did and have developed not one but three sonic technologies that hold and manipulate small objects.

 Amazing stuff, this, straight out of science fiction.

 Here's the report with a link to the longer article in the journal Nature Communications.
*  *  *  *  * 

Sonic tractor beam moves stuff with sound

The concept of tractor beams that can grab and lift objects has been used by science-fiction writers, and programs like Star Trek, but has since come to fascinate scientists and engineers. Researchers have now built a working tractor beam that uses high-amplitude sound waves to generate an acoustic hologram which can pick up and move small objects.

Scientists have built a novel sonic tractor beam that can lift and move objects using sound waves. High-amplitude sound waves are used to generate an acoustic hologram which can pick up and move small objects.  The research team has created three-dimensional acoustic fields with shapes such as fingers, twisters and cages. These acoustic fields are the first acoustic holograms that can exert forces on particles to levitate and manipulate them.

The technique, published in Nature Communications, could be developed for a wide range of applications -- for example, a sonic production line could transport delicate objects and assemble them, all without physical contact. On the other hand, a miniature version could grip and transport drug capsules or microsurgical instruments through living tissue.

Asier Marzo, PhD student and the lead author, said: "It was an incredible experience the first time we saw the object held in place by the tractor beam. All my hard work has paid off, it's brilliant."

Bruce Drinkwater, Professor of Ultrasonics in the University of Bristol's Department of Mechanical Engineering, added: "We all know that sound waves can have a physical effect. But here we have managed to control the sound to a degree never previously achieved."

Sriram Subramanian, Professor of Informatics at the University of Sussex and co-founder of Ultrahaptics, explained: "In our device we manipulate objects in mid-air and seemingly defy gravity. Here we individually control dozens of loudspeakers to tell us an optimal solution to generate an acoustic hologram that can manipulate multiple objects in real-time without contact."

The researchers used an array of 64 miniature loudspeakers to create high-pitch and high-intensity sound waves. The tractor beam works by surrounding the object with high-intensity sound and this creates a force field that keeps the objects in place. By carefully controlling the output of the loudspeakers the object can be either held in place, moved or rotated.

The team have shown that three different shapes of acoustic force fields work as tractor beams.

  1. The first is an acoustic force field that resembles a pair of fingers or tweezers. 
  2. The second is an acoustic vortex, the objects becoming stuck-in and then trapped at the core and 
  3. the third is best described as a high-intensity cage that surrounds the objects and holds them in place from all directions.

Previous work on acoustic studies had to surround the object with loudspeakers, which limits the extent of movement and restricts many applications. Last year, the University of Dundee presented the concept of a tractor beam but no objects were held in the ray.
Video: The sonic tractor beam

Related stories:

Basics of the Universe (General Relativity, Special Relativity & Quantum Mechanics):
Technology:
Story Source:  Materials provided by University of Sussex.  Asier Marzo, Sue Ann Seah, Bruce W. Drinkwater, Deepak Ranjan Sahoo, Benjamin Long, Sriram Subramanian. Holographic acoustic elements for manipulation of levitated objects. Nature Communications, 2015

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How the lives of Georgian gaolbirds and highwaymen shaped modern Britain

Image
Writing historical fiction requires solid research of available materials and databases.  The key word here is available.   So news of a new publicly accessible database that allows an author to research a very interesting past era is priceless almost beyond words.   I expect some exciting fiction to come out of this announcement. Here's the story, with a link to the source in the attribution. *  *  *  *  * London Lives, a landmark project led by Professor Bob Shoemaker from the University of Sheffield and Professor Tim Hitchcock from the University of Sussex, has uncovered a mass of extraordinary new evidence which reveals how the lives of thousands of 18th-century poor and criminal Londoners helped shape modern Britain. Based on evidence made available in a publicly available database, the study sheds new light on the everyday lives of thieves, prostitutes, vagrants, highwaymen, con-men, paupers and jailbirds, revealing how their daily fight for survival led to t
Read more

An unexpected way to recover from a breakup

Image
Breaking up is truly hard to do. And recovery from a breakup can be even harder. Your friends may counsel you to put the whole thing out of your mind. But new research suggests that repeatedly reflecting on a break-up -- even through participation in a research study -- actually speeds emotional recovery. "Breakups are ubiquitous -- most adults have experienced at least one in their life -- and are typically very distressing," says Grace Larson of Northwestern University. After studying divorce and breakups for years using longitudinal, multi-method designs, Larson and her then-adviser David Sbarra of the University of Arizona wanted to study whether these research techniques on their own were affecting participants. One concern they had was that the studies could be harming participants, Larson says. "At first glance, it might seem like repeatedly reminding participants that they had just broken up -- and asking them to describe the breakup over and over --
Read more

Greek Bronze Age ended 100 years earlier than thought

Image
Source: www.shef.ac.uk The charred remains of Assiros Toumba in Greece. Writing historical fiction set in the Greek Bronze Age?  Or simply enjoy reading this genre'?  Here's a study you may find interesting. C onventional estimates for the collapse of the Aegean civilization may be incorrect by up to a century, according to new radiocarbon analyses. While historical chronologies traditionally place the end of the Greek Bronze Age at around 1025 BCE, this latest research suggests a date 70 to 100 years earlier. www.weather-forecast.com Archaeologists from the University of Birmingham selected 60 samples of animal bones, plant remains and building timbers, excavated at Assiros in northern Greece, to be radiocarbon dated and correlated with 95.4% accuracy using Bayesian statistical methodology at the University of Oxford and the Akademie der Wissenschaften Heidelberg, Germany. Researcher Dr Ken Wardle says, 'These new results tell a story that is totall
Read more

Mood Instability and Your Characters

Image
You're putting together a character who's mood simply bounces all over the place, happy one moment, in a fit of rage the next.  Researchers at King's College London note that this sort of mood instability is part of a number of mental health disorders.  So how do you structure the personality and behavior of a character like this?  Below is the King's College report, along with a brief description from mentalhealth.com, of typical behavior, sometimes in the extreme, of a person who is very emotionally unstable.  This is offered strictly as a guide for crafting character in fiction - and NOT for the amateur diagnosis of the state of someone's mental health.  That is always best left to trained professionals. Another note about emotionally unstable behavior:  as any parent will tell you, this is how adolescents and teen-agers often behave.  It's a normal part of growing up - but it is a matter of degree .  In the extreme, however, this behavior can be diag
Read more

Remember faces but not names? You got it wrong.

Image
Source:   Daily Excelsior So, you think you're good at remembering faces, but terrible with names? New research has revealed we are actually better at remembering names than faces The cringe-worthy experience of not being able to remember an acquaintance's name leads many of us to believe we are terrible with names. However, new research has revealed this intuition is misleading; we are actually better at remembering names than faces. With the Christmas party season fast approaching, there will be plenty of opportunity to re-live the familiar, and excruciatingly-awkward, social situation of not being able to remember an acquaintance's name. This cringe-worthy experience leads many of us to believe we are terrible at remembering names. However, new research has revealed this intuition is misleading; we are actually better at remembering names than faces. The authors of the study, from the University of York, suggest that when we castigate ourselves f
Read more