Will We One Day Use Tractor Beams In Manufacturing? (cnet.com)

An anonymous reader quotes CNET: Engineers from the University of Bristol have been able to trap (essentially levitate) objects using an acoustic tractor beam that is larger than the wavelengths of sound used by the device... [A]pplications could include touchless control of drug capsules or micro-surgical implements inside the human body using sonic tractor beams. It could also become possible to move and manipulate fragile items in a whole new way. "I'm particularly excited by the idea of contactless production lines where delicate objects are assembled without touching them," said Bristol's Bruce Drinkwater, who oversaw the work.
Futurism.com adds that other researchers are also working on tractor beams in manufacturing, including one at the University of Glasgow. "The group demonstrated the process by assembling a pattern of solder beads using an optoelectronic trap, taking the liquid away, then applying heat to fuse the beads together and forge electrical connections," they report, adding "It should be possible to manipulate as many as 10,000 beads at the same time."

Comments

Not Sound

[notsteve]

This is much easier to understand if you don't think of it as sound. Sound only exists inside the brain, and the word has numerous connotations that obfuscate what's going on here. Outside of the brain, you have simple waves of air pressure. At the simplest level, if you blow on anything hard enough, you can levitate it. But perhaps there is a more efficient way to encode the energy in the moving air, and one that allows more flexibility in how the object can be moved, and balance. That's all that's at work here. The devil is in the details of aligning the frequencies, vectors, etc. [Source: was PhD candidate in audio research at Glasgow University.]