Latest Wolfgang Fink Stories

Wolfgang Fink of the University of Arizona department of electrical and computer engineering has developed an autonomous robotic lake lander that could be used to explore this planet and others. Fink unveiled the lake lander, named Tucson Explorer II, or TEX II, in a paper titled "Robotic Lake Lander Test Bed for Autonomous Surface and Subsurface Exploration of Titan Lakes," which he presented March 8 at an aerospace conference organized by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics...

An armada of robots may one day fly above the mountain tops of Saturn's moon Titan, cross its vast dunes and sail in its liquid lakes.Wolfgang Fink, visiting associate in physics at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena says we are on the brink of a great paradigm shift in planetary exploration, and the next round of robotic explorers will be nothing like what we see today."The way we explore tomorrow will be unlike any cup of tea we've ever tasted," said Fink, who was...

A mobile, four-wheeled platform, CYCLOPS may help refine and enhance the design of visual prosthesesScientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have created a remote-controlled robot that is able to simulate the "visual" experience of a blind person who has been implanted with a visual prosthesis, such as an artificial retina. An artificial retina consists of a silicon chip studded with a varying number of electrodes that directly stimulate retinal nerve cells. It...