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New Robot Swims With No Motor and No Battery Caltech researchers have successfully engineered mini robots that can propel themselves and navigate their way through water using their own bodies' reactions to different temperatures. The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) announced in a  paper  published in the   Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences  this week that its engineers in collaboration with ETH Zurich have successfully developed robots that can swim without a motor or even a power supply. These first-of-their-kind aquatic robots use self-propulsion to navigate through the water. The philosophy behind the devices is rather simply albeit ingenious. The aquatic machines are made from the material that deforms with temperature changes, shrinking and expanding to propel these mini robots through the water as if they were swimming. "Our examples show that we can use structured materials that deform in response to environmental cu

Meet the hydrogen-powered car trying to take on Tesla ·         Riversimple has developed a hydrogen-powered car that it hopes will be a viable alternative to electric vehicles. ·         The car, called Rasa, runs on 1.5 kilograms of hydrogen and can go 300 miles. ·         Riversimple is currently producing a handful of cars with the aim of having mass production by 2020. While automakers are fixated on developing the next generation of electric cars, one British firm has other ideas. Riversimple is hoping that its hydrogen-powered two-seater car, which has a futuristic design crossed with retro traits, might be able to offer a viable alternative to electric vehicles. The Wales-based company has created a car called Rasa. It says it runs on 1.5 kilograms of hydrogen and can go 300 miles. The vehicle's engineering is very different to other cars on the market. For example, it has a motor on each wheel. It is powered by reverse electrolysis. Hydrogen and o

Morocco to switch on first phase of world's largest solar plant Desert complex will provide electricity for more than 1 million people when complete, helping African country to supply most of its energy from renewables by 2030 Morocco’s king will switch on the first phase of a concentrated solar power plant on Thursday that will become the world’s largest when completed. The power station on the edge of the Saharan desert will be the size of the country’s capital city by the time it is finished in 2018, and provide electricity for 1.1 million people. After it is switched on, the plant will initially provide 650,000 local people with solar electricity from dawn until three hours after sunset.  “It is a very, very significant project in  Africa ,” said Mafalda Duarte, the manager of Climate Investment Funds (CIF), which provided $435m (£300m) of the $9bn project’s funding. “Morocco is showing real leadership and bringing the cost of the technology down in the