Tech Briefs

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A comprehensive library of technical briefs from engineering experts at NASA and major government, university, and commercial laboratories covering all aspects of innovations in electronics, software, photonics, imaging, motion control, automation, sensors, test, materials, manufacturing, mechanical, and mechatronics.

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Briefs: Energy
To improve battery performance and production, Penn State researchers and collaborators have developed a new fabrication approach that could make for more efficient batteries that maintain energy and power levels.
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Briefs: Green Design & Manufacturing
Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have created a new and efficient way to recycle metals from spent electric vehicle (EV) batteries. The method allows recovery of 100 percent of the aluminum and 98 percent of the lithium in EV batteries.
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Briefs: Materials
A team developed a framework for designing solid-state batteries (SSBs) with mechanics in mind. Their paper, published in Science, reviewed how these factors change SSBs during their cycling.
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Briefs: Materials
A collaborative research team has achieved a groundbreaking milestone in battery technology. Their remarkable achievement in developing a non-flammable gel polymer electrolyte is set to revolutionize the safety of Li-ion batteries by mitigating the risks of thermal runaway and fire incidents.
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Briefs: Power
Cornell researchers have combined soft microactuators with high-energy-density chemical fuel to create an insect-scale quadrupedal robot that is powered by combustion and can outrace, outlift, outflex, and outleap its electric-driven competitors.
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Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
MIT researchers have developed a camera-based touch sensor that is long, curved, and shaped like a human finger. Their device provides high-resolution tactile sensing over a large area. The sensor, called the GelSight Svelte, uses two mirrors to reflect and refract light.
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Briefs: Robotics, Automation & Control
Dr. Song Kahye along with Professor Lee, Dae-Young have jointly developed a soft gripper with a woven structure that can grip objects weighing more than 100 kg with 130 g of material. To increase the loading capacity of the soft robot gripper, the team applied a new structure inspired by textiles.
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Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
A new soft sensor developed by UBC and Honda researchers opens the door to a wide range of applications in robotics and prosthetics. When applied to the surface of a prosthetic arm or a robotic limb, the sensor skin provides touch sensitivity and dexterity, enabling tasks that can be difficult for machines such as picking up a piece of soft fruit.
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Briefs: Robotics, Automation & Control
Moving robots demands a lot of energy, and batteries, the typical power source, limit lifetime and raise environmental concerns. Researchers at the University of Washington have now created MilliMobile, a tiny, self-driving robot powered only by surrounding light or radio waves.
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Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Centimeter-scale walking and crawling robots are in demand both for their ability to explore tight or cluttered environments and for their low fabrication costs. Pulling from origami-inspired construction, researchers have crafted a more simplified approach to the design and fabrication of these robots.
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Briefs: Aerospace
A research team at the Illinois Institute of Technology has for the first time demonstrated the use of a novel control method in a tailless aircraft. The technology allows an aircraft to be as smooth and sleek as possible — making it safer to fly in dangerous areas where radar scans the sky for sharp edges.
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Briefs: Aerospace
A team of MIT engineers is creating a one-megawatt motor that could be a key stepping-stone toward electrifying larger aircraft. The team has designed and tested the major components of the motor.
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Briefs: Aerospace
NASA Ames Research Center has developed a novel technology — a system and approach for creating artificial gravity using a non-rotating spacecraft with connected moving modules, which can be used for habitation and other purposes.
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Briefs: Electronics & Computers
When multiple drones are working together in the same airspace, perhaps spraying pesticide over a field of corn, there’s a risk they might crash into each other. To help avoid these costly crashes, MIT researchers developed a system called MADER in 2020.
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Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Devices of all types are becoming more intelligent and may include native Ethernet. However, there are many opportunities where proven serial communications will remain the best choice for cost-effective communications.
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Briefs: Communications
MIT researchers have demonstrated the first system for ultra-low-power underwater networking and communication, which can transmit signals across kilometer-scale distances. This technique uses about one-millionth the power that existing underwater communication methods use.
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Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Testing Smart Surfaces to Improve Wireless Communication
Researchers at UBC Okanagan are looking at ways to improve cell phone connectivity and localization abilities by examining “smart” surfaces that can bounce signals from a tower to customers to improve the link.
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Exploiting Signals Broadcast by Multi-Constellation LEO Satellites
Researchers have developed an algorithm that can “eavesdrop” on any signal from a satellite and use it to locate any point on Earth, much like GPS. The study represents the first time an algorithm was able to exploit signals broadcast by multi-constellation low-Earth orbit satellites.
Briefs: Imaging
Imagine being able to snap a picture of extremely fast events on the order of a picosecond.
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Briefs: Test & Measurement
Researcher are finding ways to estimate a target location when light gets deflected by a disordered structure.
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Briefs: Imaging

Processes and structures within the body that are normally hidden from the eye can be made visible through medical imaging. Scientists use imaging to...

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Briefs: Aerospace
Researchers at The Ohio State University have developed new software to aid in the development, evaluation, and demonstration of safer autonomous, or driverless, vehicles. Called the Vehicle-in-Virtual-Environment (VVE) method, it allows the testing of driverless cars in a perfectly safe environment.
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Briefs: Software
A Software Model Makes Transport Robots Smarter
Imagine a team of humans and robots working together to process online orders — real-life workers strategically positioned among their automated coworkers who are moving intelligently back and forth in a warehouse space. This could become a reality sooner than later, thanks to researchers at the University of Missouri.
Briefs: Power
Launched by Purdue University postgraduate students, Aerovy Mobility commercializes cloud-based software solutions to plan and operate infrastructure that charges electric aircraft with renewable energy.
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Briefs: Electronics & Computers
New research in quantum computing at Sandia National Laboratories is moving science closer to being able to overcome supply-chain challenges and restore global security during future periods of unrest.
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Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Researchers have developed the world’s smallest LED. It enables the conversion of existing mobile phone cameras into high-resolution microscopes. Smaller than the wavelength of light, the new LED was used to build the world’s smallest holographic microscope.
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Engineers have made progress toward lithium-metal batteries that charge as fast as an hour. This fast charging is thanks to lithium metal crystals that can be seeded and grown — quickly and uniformly — on a surprising surface.
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Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
Study shows improvements to chemical sensing chip that aims to quickly and accurately identify drugs and other trace chemicals.
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Briefs: Energy
NASA engineers have developed a new approach to mitigating unwanted motion in floating structures. Ideally suited to applications including offshore wind energy platforms and barges, the innovation uses water ballast as a motion damping fluid.
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