ADME.Tech

ADME wishes everyone a very Happy Sinhala and Tamil New Year!

May this Avurudu bring fresh hope and brighter opportunities ahead. Wishing you and your loved ones a season filled with peace, prosperity and meaningful progress in the year to come.

A new system called is improving how robots grasp transparent and reflective objects…

have long struggled with objects they cannot clearly measure.

HEAPGrasp is changing that by enabling robots to handle transparent and reflective objects more reliably, something that has long been a challenge in . The method was developed to address cases where conventional measurement systems struggle with materials like glass, clear plastics, and shiny metal surfaces.

Instead of relying on expensive sensors, this approach uses a standard hand-eye camera combined with intelligent planning, allowing robots to better interpret difficult surfaces through silhouette-based 3D measurement and optimized camera movement.

The result is not just improved accuracy, reaching 96% success in reported real robot experiments, but also faster and more efficient operation, reducing camera trajectory length by 52% and ex*****on time by 19% compared with a baseline method.

This is important because real world environments are rarely ideal.

Many industrial and everyday objects do not present clear visual cues to conventional depth-based systems, making reliable handling difficult for automation in settings such as logistics, food service, and manufacturing.

By improving how robots deal with these edge cases, systems like this move closer to being practical, adaptable, and better suited for less controlled environments.

Battery powered exploration may not be the only path forward.

A new wind powered , developed by and called , is demonstrating how machines can move through harsh, windy environments without using a to power locomotion.

Instead of relying on conventional onboard power storage, the system uses a simple mechanical design that converts airflow into movement. This allows the robot to continue navigating terrain as long as wind is available, addressing one of the major constraints in long duration exploration, energy for movement.

This approach is especially relevant in environments where recharging or replacing batteries is impractical, such as remote deserts, polar regions, or even other planetary environments.

By reducing dependence on onboard energy storage for movement, robots like this could potentially operate for extended periods without needing to stop and recharge.

The focus here is not speed or precision, but persistence, the ability to keep moving and exploring as long as environmental conditions allow.

Solar efficiency has just crossed a threshold that was once considered difficult to achieve in advanced .

A new perovskite silicon triple junction solar cell has pushed efficiency beyond 30 percent, marking a significant step forward in photovoltaic performance.

Traditional silicon cells are limited in how much of the solar spectrum they can convert into electricity. Triple-junction designs address this by stacking multiple layers, each tuned to capture different wavelengths of light, reducing energy losses and improving overall conversion efficiency.

The addition of materials is key here. They are highly tunable and promising for integration with silicon technologies, making them strong candidates for next generation high efficiency solar cells.

Crossing the 30 percent mark is an important laboratory milestone. Higher efficiency means more power generated from the same surface area, strengthening the long term case for solar in space constrained or high demand applications.

The focus now shifts from proving performance to making these designs stable, manufacturable and cost effective at scale.