From ‘Star Trek’ to reality: team creates sonic tractor beam
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UNITED KINGDOM — Working sonic tractor beams that can grab and lift items are no longer limited to science fiction.
For the first time a team has created a one-sided device that picks up and moves objects, like the mysterious tractor beams depicted in Star Trek and other science fiction works. Researchers from Sussex and Bristol Universities envision numerous potential applications for the technology outside of the tractor beams used on science fiction spacecrafts.
“For example, a sonic production line could transport delicate objects and assemble them, all without physical contact,” a news release from the University of Sussex reads. “Or a miniature version could grip and transport drug capsules or microsurgical instruments through living tissue.”
Previously, other researchers have found ways to use loudspeakers to move objects but this new sonic tractor beam is significant because earlier projects required items to be completely surrounded by acoustics and their movements were limited.
Objects controlled by the sonic tractor beam can be held in place, moved or rotated, according to the University of Sussex. The device features an array of 64 miniature ultrasonic loudspeakers that can be manipulated by a computer program to create acoustic force fields that trap the items. Researchers described the phenomenon as being like a “high intensity cage that surrounds the objects.”
So far the device can only levitate a small bead, but researchers hope to eventually use the technology to control objects as small as a human cell. They also want to advance the technology so it can levitate much larger items.
"In our device we manipulate objects in mid-air and seemingly defy gravity,” University of Sussex professor Sriram Subramania said in a statement. “We can individually control dozens of loudspeakers to tell us an optimal solution to generate an acoustic hologram that can manipulate multiple objects in real-time without contact.”
The findings were published Tuesday in Nature Communications.
