Playing Nice: How Self-Driving Cars and Human-Driven Cars Could Share the Road

Akin to when Model Ts traveled alongside horses and buggies, autonomous vehicles (AVs) and human-driven vehicles (HVs) will someday share the road. How to best...

How Flying Insects and Drones Can Discern Up from Down

Scientists have developed a theory that can explain how flying insects determine the gravity direction without using accelerometers. It also forms a substantial step in the creation of...

Researchers Take Stock of the Most Promising Control Scheme for Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors

Electrical machines consume nearly half of all the electrical power generated worldwide, making them one of the top contributors to carbon...

Computer-Guided Drawing Machine Fabricates Paper Metamaterials

Scientists have developed a new technique for fabricating metamaterials from sheets of paper, using a computer to guide the movement of conductive ink pens and mechanical...

Fighting Gravity with the World’s First Propulsion Suit

Using jet fuel as a means to power five gas turbines, the suit can propel pilots about 40 mph for up to eight minutes and can generate more than 1,000 horsepower.

How is AI Transforming Manufacturing?

Artificial intelligence (AI) adoption is gradually increasing across industries. How much do you know about AI in manufacturing? Take this quiz to find out.

Gallium Nitride Yields More Energy-Efficient Devices

Engineers have created new high-power electronic devices that are more energy efficient than their predecessors.

Designing to Minimize Environmental Impact

According to the NASA Earth Observatory, air temperatures on Earth have been rising since the Industrial Revolution. Here is a suggestion about one way that engineers could help reduce the problems caused by that in their everyday work.

New Imaging Method Reveals Concealed Objects

Using state-of-the-art indium phosphide transistors and a basic computer and mirrors, researchers were able to produce images of concealed bodies.

Robots Walk Autonomously Via Microscopic Brains

Engineers have installed tiny electronic “brains” on solar-powered robots so that the machines can walk autonomously, sans external control.

Test Your Knowledge About Wearable Technology

See how much you know about wearable technology and the progress it has made.

Highly Sensitive, Mass Producible Organic Photodetectors

Incorporating new green-light absorbing transparent organic photodetectors into organic-silicon hybrid image sensors could be useful for applications such as light-based heart-rate monitoring, fingerprint recognition and devices that detect the presence of nearby objects

Bringing More Reliable Electricity to Puerto Rican Microgrids

Ben Ollis and a team of engineers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory are creating a novel orchestrator tool to manage a cluster of microgrids so they can directly support and communicate with each other, making them more resilient during long power outages. It is being installed as a demonstration project in the small town of Adjuntas in the Central Mountains of Puerto Rico.

Space to Sea: An Underwater Robot Takes a Deep Dive

Aquanaut, built on lessons from NASA’s robot astronaut, will cut costs for ocean industries.

Test Your Knowledge About Batteries

Do you know how far the battery has advanced since its inception? Find out with our quiz below.

New Ultrathin Capacitor Could Enable Energy-Efficient Microchips

The silicon-based computer chips that power our modern devices require vast amounts of energy to operate. Despite ever-improving computing efficiency, information technology...

A New Neuromorphic Chip for AI on The Edge

An international team of researchers has designed and built a chip that runs computations directly in memory and can run a wide variety of AI applications — all at a fraction of the energy...

Leading Experts Suggest Guidelines for Assessing Emerging Transistor Performance

To continue making smartphones, laptops, and other devices more powerful, yet energy efficient, industry is intensely focused on identifying promising...

Strain-Sensing Smart Skin Ready to Deploy

A strain-sensing smart skin developed at Rice University uses very small carbon nanotube structures to monitor and detect damage in large structures. The “strain paint” uses the fluorescent...

Products of Tomorrow

From space propulsion to underwater monitoring and antibacterial coatings, three new innovations aim to address real-world problems.

5 Ws of Energy-Harvesting Yarns

A group of University of Texas at Dallas researchers have invented energy-harvesting yarns made from carbon nanotubes that produce electricity when repeatedly stretched.

Glow-in-the-Dark Algae May Be Ideal for Soft Robots

Engineers developed soft devices containing algae that glow when under mechanical stress —perfect for building soft robots.

When Cobots Make a Manufacturing Difference

Robots have been widely used in industry for many years, but cobots, or collaborative robots, are a more recent arrival to the market.

Pressure Sensors for Improved Dexterity in Robots

Made from 3D graphene foam, the sensors use a piezoresistive approach, meaning when the material is put under pressure it dynamically changes its electric resistance, easily detecting and adapting to the range of pressure required, from light to heavy.

Getting a Grip with ‘Necrobotic’ Spiders

An open-access study in Advanced Science outlines the process by which Preston and lead author Faye Yap harnessed a spider’s physiology in a first step toward a novel area of research they call “necrobotics.”

A Manta Ray-Inspired Bio-Syncretic Robot

Biomimetics is one of the most important robotic research methods which can improve the kinematic performance of robots by imitating the structure and behavior of natural organisms.

Inflatable Actuators Use Origami Principles to Deform

Researchers have taken inspiration from origami to create inflatable structures that can bend, twist, and move in complex, distinct ways from a single source of pressure.