Over the retiring several decades , scientists have developed optical and acoustic tweezers . Using illumination or legal waves , they can hook and control the motion of a small object , like a tinytractor beam . These are exciting maturation , but have very stringent requirements to work . Researchers have now developed a new way to move and manipulate object at a length , still using sound , that allow them to move on complex paths .
The method is called wave momentum shaping , and it is indifferent to the physical properties of the objective and the surround . The squad demonstrate it by moving a swim Ping River niff lump around a series of obstacles .
“ opthalmic tweezers work by create a lite ‘ hotspot ’ to trap speck , like a egg fall into a hole . But if there are other object in the neighbourhood , this gob is difficult to create and move around , ” senior writer Romain Fleury , from Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale De Lausanne , said in astatement . “ In our experiments , instead of trapping objects , we gently pushed them around , as you might head a puck with a hockey game joint . ”
The design of the system is cunning . Speakers and microphone were placed around the water supply tank , and the speakers produce audible soundwaves that would push the ping - niff ball around . The mics register the feedback from the waves hitting the ball . This is known as the scattering matrix .
They added a camera to the mix that could see the motion of the Ping River pong ball , and they were able to calculate the optimum momentum to deliver to the ball to make it move around the obstruction successfully .
“ The method is root in impulse preservation , which makes it highly simple and general , and that ’s why it ’s so promising , ” Fleury add .
The team played around with fixed and moving obstacle . The finish is to simulate environs that can change without discourage . The team hop that this method might be used in biomedical app , so the successes that this approach has achieved are exciting .
“ Some drug pitch methods already use soundwaves to release encapsulated drugs , so this technique is especially attractive for crusade a drug straightaway toward tumor cells , for example , ” Fleury continued .
It might also help to falsify cell or biologic tissue paper outside of a torso , since you would n’t use cat’s-paw that might damage or foul the object of subject area . It might also have an app in 3D printing , and it might be possible to use Light Within as well as sound .
But the team ’s first step is go from the macro instruction to the micro and see how it would work there .
A paper describing the results is published in the journalNature Physics .
