Cornell University researchers have created an autonomous flying robot that is as smart as a bird when it comes to maneuvering around obstacles. Able to guide itself through forests, tunnels or damaged buildings, the machine could have tremendous value in search-and-rescue operations. The team is...

Dr. Carlos Calle, lead scientist in Kennedy Space Center’s Electrostatics and Surface Physics Lab, is developing instrumentation that addresses the problem of electrostatic dust. The technology will be used for future exploration missions on Mars...

A new device invented at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) can absorb 99.75 percent of infrared light that shines on it. When activated, it appears black to infrared cameras. Composed of just a 180-nanometer-thick layer of vanadium dioxide on top of a sheet of sapphire, the...

The more time it takes for an earthquake fault to heal, the faster the shake it will produce when it finally ruptures, according to a new study by engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, who conducted their work using a tabletop model of a quake fault. While the study does...

Imagine navigating through a grocery store with your cell phone. As you turn down the bread aisle, ads and coupons for hot dog buns and English muffins pop up on your screen. The electronics industry would like to make such personal navigators a reality, but, to do so, they need the next...

Stanford University engineers have developed the first solar cell made entirely of carbon - a promising alternative to the expensive materials used in photovoltaic devices today. The thin-film prototype is made of carbon materials that can be coated from solution - a technique that has the potential to...

NASA's Chief Technologist Mason Peck delivered the keynote address, "Technology and the Future," at the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Fall Symposium in Hampton, Virginia. The speech showed that Peck envisions a "spacefaring nation" where our relationship with spacecraft, space hardware, or data from...

NASA technologists have developed a low-cost, low-mass technique for protecting sensitive spacecraft components from outgassed contaminants. The team has created a patent-pending, sprayable paint that adsorbs the gaseous molecules and stops them from affixing to instrument components. Made of...

Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara have designed a detector that uses microfluidic nanotechnology to mimic the biological mechanism behind canine scent receptors. The device is both highly sensitive to trace amounts of certain vapor molecules, and able to tell a specific...

Computer engineering students at The University of Alabama in Huntsville have designed a tool that could revolutionize new ways of using electronic devices with just one hand. It’s called a Gauntlet Keyboard, a glove device that functions as a wireless keyboard. Instead of tapping keys on a...

Using a new method for precisely controlling the deposition of carbon, researchers have demonstrated a technique for connecting multi-walled carbon nanotubes to the metallic pads of integrated circuits without the high interface resistance produced by traditional fabrication...

Miniature “bio-bots” developed at the University of Illinois are made of hydrogel and heart cells, but can walk on their own. The key to the bio-bots’ locomotion is asymmetry. Resembling a tiny springboard, each bot has one long, thin leg resting on a stout supporting leg. The thin leg is covered with rat...

If a future hurricane causes power outages, regulators say they could float wireless antennas from balloons or drones to solve problems with telecommunications networks. The Federal Communications Commission is exploring the use of such airborne technology to restore communications after disasters....

Migrating birds, NASCAR drivers and Tour de France bicyclists already get it. And now the Air Force is thinking about flying gas-guzzling cargo aircraft in formation -- 'dragging' off one another -- on long-haul flights across the oceans.