Researchers at the Universities of Sussex and Bristol have created a sonic tractor beam that’s capable of levitating and manipulating small objects.
Publishing their findings in the journal Nature Communications, the researchers used forces produced by a field of ultrasonic waves to manipulate lightweight, 5mm-sized polystyrene beads in the air.
The technology uses an array of 64 miniature loudspeakers to produce a range of high-pitch and high-intensity sound waves.
By manipulating the interfering sound waves, the team created three different moving acoustic holograms that acted like tractor beams. This included tweezer-like twin traps, twister-like vortex traps and bottle-shaped traps which could levitate, grab, nudge and spin the particles.
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Publishing their findings in the journal Nature Communications, the researchers used forces produced by a field of ultrasonic waves to manipulate lightweight, 5mm-sized polystyrene beads in the air.
The technology uses an array of 64 miniature loudspeakers to produce a range of high-pitch and high-intensity sound waves.
By manipulating the interfering sound waves, the team created three different moving acoustic holograms that acted like tractor beams. This included tweezer-like twin traps, twister-like vortex traps and bottle-shaped traps which could levitate, grab, nudge and spin the particles.
Continue reading…
Continue reading...