You can now move objects without touching them 

If you could have a superpower, what would it be? To read people’s minds or to be invisible? Okay, what about telekinesis? Before you start wondering what it is, it is nothing but the ability to control things around us with our minds. Sounds wonderful, isn’t it? After all, on days when you don’t feel like moving around at all, telekinesis can come in real handy.  

And now, it looks like, this is going to come through after all, at least in a certain way. Guess how? Well, recently, researchers based at USA’s University of Minnesota (in collaboration with Minnesota Robotics Institute and Air Force Office of Scientific Research) have unveiled a brand-new technology that uses ultrasound waves to move objects, without any physical contact. This is being deemed as a scientific breakthrough and has been published in a research paper in the journal Nature Communications.  

Earlier, objects were thought to be manipulated using light and sound waves but only when they were smaller (millimetres or nanometres in sizes) than the wavelengths of light and sound. But now, things have gone to a whole new level with researchers developing a method that can move large-sized objects taking the help of metamaterial physics.  

Curious to know what it is?  Metamaterials refer to materials that are artificially engineered to interact with light and sound waves. And in this case, a metamaterial pattern once put on the surface of an object can help move it in any direction hands-free while using high-frequency sound alone. How does this happen? Well, objects are given a metasurface that can in turn reflect sound in any way we want; meaning one can control the acoustic force from far away, that is auto-exerted on the object.  

While researchers aim to finetune this technique and move objects of different shapes and sizes and materials, others are looking forward to implement this existing method in the field of robotics and manufacturing industries (imagine moving objects in warehouses). So far, things have controlled motion wherein signals are transferred using physical tethers or some kind of inbuilt power source. But now, thanks to this brand-new method, things can finally move in a controlled way simply by programming its metasurface. This is being deemed as contactless actuation of objects. 

Interestingly, using this latest technique, objects can be moved front and back as well as towards the source.