A groundbreaking study reveals how strain rate influences anthracite crack characteristic Sstress under dynamic loading, offering a predictive model to assess crack stress thresholds. This research provides critical insights into damage evolution mechanisms, advancing strategies to predict and mitigate catastrophic events like rock bursts in underground mining.

How do piezoelectric actuators perform under extreme conditions such as high temperatures, strong vibrations, and nanoscale precision tasks?

In a review published in the International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing, researchers examine their use in five major areas including positioning and alignment, biomedical devices, microrobotics, vibration mitigation, and advanced manufacturing.

The study highlights recent progress in materials, control methods, and system design that could support the development of more reliable and efficient precision technologies.

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem is proud to announce its participation in RobustifAI, a groundbreaking Horizon Europe research consortium dedicated to strengthening the reliability and robustness of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) technologies. The project officially commenced on June 1, 2025, with a total budget of €9.3 million and a projected duration of 36 months.

Currently, numerous biomimetic robots inspired by natural biological systems have been developed. However, creating soft robots with versatile locomotion modes remains a significant challenge. Snakes, as invertebrate reptiles, exhibit diverse and powerful locomotion abilities, including prey constriction, sidewinding, accordion locomotion, and winding climbing, making them a focus of robotics research. In this study, we present a snake-inspired soft robot with an initial coiling structure, fabricated using MXene-cellulose nanofiber ink printed on pre-expanded polyethylene film through direct ink writing technology. The controllable fabrication of initial coiling structure soft robot (ICSBot) has been achieved through theoretical calculations and finite element analysis to predict and analyze the initial structure of ICSBot, and programmable ICSBot has been designed and fabricated. This robot functions as a coiling gripper capable of grasping objects with complex shapes under near infrared light stimulation. Additionally, it demonstrates multi-modal crawling locomotion in various environments, including confined spaces, unstructured terrains, and both inside and outside tubes. These results offer a novel strategy for designing and fabricating coiling-structured soft robots and highlight their potential applications in smart and multifunctional robotics.