How does flexible display work

Although it is possible for the monocopter to fly with more flexible materials we tested, such as flexible plastic or polymide flex, they allow the wing to twist freely mid-flight making cyclic control effort from the motor less effective.

The balsa laminated with plastic provides enough rigidity for an effective control, while allowing folding in a pre-determined triangular fold. Can F-SAM fly outdoors? What is required to fly it outside of a motion capture environment?

Yes it can fly outdoors. It is passively stable so it does not require a closed-loop control for its flight. The motion capture environment provides its absolute position for station-holding and waypoint flights when indoors. For outdoor flight, an electronic compass provides the relative heading for the basic cyclic control. We are working on a prototype with an integrated GPS for outdoor autonomous flights.

A camera can be added we have done this before , but due to its spinning nature, images captured can come out blurry. A conventional LiDAR system requires a dedicated actuator to create a spinning motion. Your paper says that "in the future, we may look into possible launching of F-SAM directly from the container, without the need for human intervention.

Currently, F-SAM can be folded into a compact form and stored inside a container. However, it still requires a human to unfold it and either hand-launch it or put it on the floor to fly off.

In the future, we envision that F-SAM is put inside a container which has the mechanism such as pressured gas to catapult the folded unit into the air, which can begin unfolding immediately due to elastic materials used. The motor can initiate the spin which allows the wing to straighten out due to centrifugal forces. F-SAM could be a good toy but it may not be a good alternative to quadcopters if the objective is conventional aerial photography or videography.

However, it can be a good contender for single-use GPS-guided reconnaissance missions. As it uses only one actuator for its flight, it can be made relatively cheaply.

It is also very silent during its flight and easily camouflaged once landed. Various lightweight sensors can be integrated onto the platform for different types of missions, such as climate monitoring. F-SAM units can be deployed from the air, as they can also autorotate on their way down, while also flying at certain periods for extended meteorological data collection in the air. We have a few exciting projects on hand, most of which focus on 'do more with less' theme.

This means our projects aim to achieve multiple missions and flight modes while using as few actuators as possible. This platform, published earlier this year in IEEE Transactions on Robotics , is able to achieve two flight modes autorotation and diving with just one actuator.

It is ideal for deploying single-use sensors to remote locations. For example, we can use the platform to deploy sensors for forest monitoring or wildfire alert system. The sensors can land on tree canopies, and once landed the wing provides the necessary area for capturing solar energy for persistent operation over several years. Another interesting scenario is using the autorotating platform to guide the radiosondes back to the collection point once its journey upwards is completed.

Currently, many radiosondes are sent up with hydrogen balloons from weather stations all across the world more than 20, annually from Australia alone and once the balloon reaches a high altitude and bursts, the sensors drop back onto the earth and no effort is spent to retrieve these sensors.

By guiding these sensors back to a collection point, millions of dollars can be saved every year—and also [it helps] save the environment by polluting less.

Power switches of all types and sizes play many important roles in our everyday lives, from turning on cellphones to safely interrupting the current flow from a large power transformer.

In this presentation, we will discuss how you can model switches with COMSOL Multiphysics, in particular when more than one type of physics is involved. One such scenario that we will be looking at is structural contact and resistive heating in a contact switch, featuring structural mechanics, electric currents, and heat transfer. Another example is a magnetic circuit breaker, with magnetic fields and multibody dynamics.

Watch this on-demand webinar. Linus Andersson is an applications engineer providing technical support within COMSOL and tocustomers worldwide, specializing in electromagnetic and acoustic simulations. From Foldable Phones to Stretchy Screens. Explore by topic. The Magazine The Institute.

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Consumer Electronics Topic Type Feature. Today, you can buy a smartphone with a foldable display. Tomorrow you may wear a screen that can stretch. Photo-illustration: Dan Saelinger. Article The Institute Type Topic. Robotics News Type Topic. Topic Type Transportation Analysis. The RAZR 4 folds in on itself like a flip phone, and essentially turns your bulky cellphone into a much smaller device. Some tech demos have shown foldable phones that can wrap around your wrist, and Apple acquired a patent for a phone that rolls up like a scroll, oddly enough.

A lot of the problems with traditional smartphones have been worked out. But foldable phones will set us back a bit. Remember how iPods had plastic screens that would get scratched and scuffed in your pocket? Yeah, foldable phones are going to have the same problem. Manufacturers are going to have to stray away from hard metal or plastic phone cases in favor of materials that can handle being bent hundreds of times a day. Battery life, software compatibility, circuitry, and ease-of-use will also be hurdles for these phones.

Remember how wonky the 1st generation iPad was? But competition promotes technological progress, and these foldable devices if they become popular should become comfortable and durable in less than a decade.

A lot of companies seem to be pushing their flexible phones to the market as fast as possible alongside 5G , and some companies will set release dates at MWC on February 25th.

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Browse All Privacy and Security Articles Browse All Linux Articles Browse All Buying Guides. Best iPhone 13 Pro Case. Change Language. Related Articles. Table of Contents. Save Article. Improve Article. Surprisingly, developer support may turn out to be the easiest part of this. App developers are pretty savvy about getting their applications to fit properly. All of this will take time to come together. But most of them will try foldable devices, and eventually one of them may actually connect with a world of smartphone buyers eager for something different.

That would be really neat. Now to see how the future bends from here. Bent Out of Shape. Executive Editor, News Twitter. Topics smartphones displays materials science.