Key Highlights:
- – A team of researchers successfully created an “air-powered” memory to operate a soft robot and play the piano.
- – Pneumatic features rely on air pressure to work and transfer commands from the computer program to the device.
- – Scientists may build a “pneumatic CPU” that would just require the power of air to work.
Air-Powered Soft Robot
An “air-powered” memory helped a soft robot to play the piano, using a technology called “pneumatic RAM“, which uses atmospheric pressures to convey the binary information required to function. The device does not use any hardware for its random-access memory (RAM), and it might be something that helps alleviate the public’s hardware or chip scarcity.
The chip shortage has been a huge concern for most sectors across the world over the last year, including Intel’s CPU division, all the way down to the distribution of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.
According to the University of California – Riverside, a team of researchers successfully created an “air-powered” memory to operate a soft robot and play the piano. The air pressure is utilized to convey the binary codes of ones and zeroes used to operate the robots’ rubber fingers.
Soft robots are described to be “soft” since they were designed for certain functions that necessitate cautious, majestic, and graceful movement. Playing the piano demands finger fluidity, and a typical “hard robot” with metal components may not provide the same beauty as soft ones, therefore the invention.
Pneumatic RAM
The term pneumatic refers to something that is driven or controlled by gas or air to work, while RAM refers to random access memory for computers. Combining the two is not considered conventional, but rather “innovative” and novel in the business.
The researchers’ pneumatic RAM no longer requires the hardware chip that is attached to computers with limited storage space to transmit the current commands from the software. Its pneumatic features rely on air pressure to work and transfer commands from the computer program to the device.
Solving Chip Shortage Problems
The pneumatic RAM that the researchers demonstrated is a work-in-progress that is being developed so that it may be used for purposes other than playing the piano. It may then be utilized for various reasons, such as operating a computer only from the hot air created by the cooler fan, for a standard desktop setup used for work or gaming.
As traditional RAM hardware can be dedicated to the creation of the chip shortage, pneumatic RAM can also be used for CPUs, or computer processing units. Furthermore, scientists may build a “pneumatic CPU” that would just require the power of air to work in order to save on components and address the scarcity. This is speculative, and there have been no documented advancements on a pneumatic CPU, so proceed with care.
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