Today on Engineering Newswire, we starting up the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator, grabbing objects with a giant tongue gripper, and playing dodgeball with a bipedal robot …

Giant Tongue Gripper

Engineers at the University of Oslo and Festo have come together to create the FlexShapeGripper – A new gripper inspired by a chameleon’s tongue.

The gripper consists of a double-acting cylinder with one chamber filled with compressed air and a second that is fitted with an elastic silicone molding and filled with water. When the top pressurized chamber is vented, the water-filled chamber is pulled inward to warp itself around an object.

CERN’s Particle Smasher is Almost Back in Business

On Monday, teams working on the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator, resolved a problem that had been delaying the collider’s restart, which is more than two years in the making.

A few days ago, a short circuit to ground in one of the connections between a magnet and its diode caused further delays. The diodes are part of the protection system for the collider’s superconducting magnets, which divert the current into a parallel circuit in the event of a quench. Quenches are bad, and what shut down the LHC in 2008 for more than a year. It’s when the magnet changes from a superconducting to a conducting state.

Bipedal Robot Takes a Pounding

The bipedal ATRIAS robot can hand the assault like a pro without stopping or falling over. Developed at Oregon State University’s Dynamic Robotics Laboratory, the ATRIAS design is based around two pogo-stick like legs that provide the robot with a suspension system and storage mechanism for mechanical energy.

Its four-bar carbon-fiber leg mechanism is very lightweight, meaning each footfall is softened instead of sending large jolts to the body. The legs are also mounted to series-elastic fiberglass springs, which allow the robot to perform more dynamic maneuvers.