Comment in 2018

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  • X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) are revolutionizing our ability to measure and understand the behaviour of complex materials. A new generation of XFELs is imminent, offering new approaches to materials characterization.

    • Mike Dunne
    Comment
  • An intergovernmental research facility in Jordan — SESAME — opened its doors in 2017 to researchers from the neighbouring region. A year later, the first experiments by users are revealing how the possibilities for scientific research in the region have increased, bringing the promise for rapid development and the initiation of new collaborations.

    • Rolf Heuer
    • James Gillies
    Comment
  • To protect our cultural heritage, it is essential that we understand the material properties of artefacts. Detailed information can be obtained on complex and often highly degraded materials using synchrotron X-ray analysis, aiding our ability to design effective stabilization and remediation strategies.

    • Eleanor J. Schofield
    Comment
  • ‘Push-button’ or fully automated manufacturing would enable the production of robots with zero intervention from human hands. Realizing this utopia requires a fundamental shift from a sequential (design–materials–manufacturing) to a concurrent design methodology.

    • Jamie Paik
    Comment
  • The field of soft wearable robotics offers the opportunity to wear robots like clothes to assist the movement of specific body parts or to endow the body with functionalities. Collaborative efforts of materials, apparel and robotics science have already led to the development of wearable technologies for physical therapy. Optimizing the human–robot system by human-in-the-loop approaches will pave the way for personalized soft wearable robots for a variety of applications.

    • Conor Walsh
    Comment
  • Soft robots promise solutions for a wide range of applications that cannot be achieved with traditional, rigid-component robots. A key challenge is the creation of robotic structures that can vary their stiffness at will, for example, by using antagonistic actuators, to optimize their interaction with the environment and be able to exert high forces.

    • Kaspar Althoefer
    Comment
  • Soft small robots offer the opportunity to non-invasively access human tissue to perform medical operations and deliver drugs; however, challenges in materials design, biocompatibility and function control remain to be overcome for soft robots to reach the clinic.

    • Metin Sitti
    Comment
  • The growing demands of quantum materials, engineering and technology make access to microkelvin temperatures ever more essential. Experience in Europe suggests that new working methods, encouraged by an imaginative funding atmosphere, can accelerate progress in this frontier field.

    • George Pickett
    • Christian Enss
    Comment