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Articles: Robotics, Automation & Control
“AstroAnts” are small robots for inspection and diagnostic tasks on external spacecraft surfaces, both in orbit and on planetary surfaces. They're also the Robotics & Automation Finalist. Read on to learn more.
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Articles: Electronics & Computers
The wearable Thin-Film Thermoelectric Cooling (TFTEC) device is one of the world’s lightest, thinnest, and fastest refrigeration devices. It's also the Electronics Finalist. Read on to learn more.
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Briefs: Robotics, Automation & Control
Because they can go where humans can’t, robots are especially suited for safely working with hazardous nuclear waste. Now, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have designed and tested a remote-controlled, dual-arm telerobotics system with human-like capabilities that has the potential to revolutionize hazardous waste clean-up and holds potential for broader applications.
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Briefs: Materials
Advancing Chemical Recycling of Waste Plastics
New research from the lab of Giannis Mpoumpakis, Associate Professor of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, focuses on optimizing a promising technology called pyrolysis, which can chemically recycle waste plastics into more valuable chemicals.
Briefs: Green Design & Manufacturing
A new battery formulation captures carbon dioxide from industrial emissions and converts it into a solid form that has the potential to be used in other products. Read on to learn more.
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Briefs: Materials
John Kolinski and his team at the Laboratory of Engineering Mechanics of Soft Interfaces aim to understand how cracks propagate in brittle solids, which is essential for developing and testing safe and cost-effective composite materials for use in construction, sports, and aerospace engineering.
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Technology & Society: Design
UBC’s nature-based solution with locally available earthen materials could aid in building climate-resilient infrastructure.
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
A new robotic suction cup which can grasp rough, curved, and heavy stone, has been developed by scientists at the University of Bristol. The team, based at Bristol Robotics Laboratory, studied the structures of octopus biological suckers, which have superb adaptive suction abilities enabling them to anchor to rock.
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Briefs: Energy
Flow batteries can serve as backup generators for the electric grid. Flow batteries are one of the key pillars of a decarbonization strategy to store energy from renewable energy resources. Their advantage is that they can be built at any scale, from the lab-bench scale, as in this PNNL study, to the size of a city block.
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Application Briefs: Software
A trio of small rovers that will explore the Moon in sync with one another are rolling toward launch. NASA JPL’s CADRE rovers will soon map the lunar surface together as a tech demo to show the promise of multirobot missions.
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Briefs: Electronics & Computers
There are times when scientific progress comes in the form of discovering something completely new. Other times, progress boils down to doing something better, faster, or more easily. New research from the lab of Caltech’s Lihong Wang, the Bren Professor of Medical Engineering and Electrical Engineering, is the latter. Read on to learn more.
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Briefs: Packaging & Sterilization
When it comes to making batteries that last longer, a team of researchers including engineers at Brown University and Idaho National Laboratory believes the key might be in how things get clean — specifically how soap works in this process.
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Briefs: Power
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory have invented and patented a new cathode material that replaces lithium ions with sodium and would be significantly cheaper.
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Briefs: Energy
Combination of Stressors Key to Testing Perovskite Solar Cells
Solar cells must endure a set of harsh conditions — often with variable combinations of changing stress factors — to judge their stability, but most researchers conduct these tests indoors with a few fixed stressing conditions.
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
A research team led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has developed “supramolecular ink,” a new technology for use in OLED (organic light-emitting diode) displays or other electronic devices.
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Briefs: Electronics & Computers
IO-Link is a digital advancement combining the essential electrical and electronic characteristics of other connectivity methods. The resulting devices and architecture are enabling designers to create more intelligent equipment, streamline installation, and reduce overall costs.
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Briefs: Electronics & Computers
This advancement, one of the first of its kind, enables a useful new capability for a variety of applications, including improved prostheses, haptics for new modalities in augmented reality (AR), and thermally modulated therapeutics for applications such as pain management. The technology also has a variety of potential industrial and research applications.
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Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Researchers from MIT, the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, and elsewhere have developed a technique that enables deep-learning models to efficiently adapt to new sensor data directly on an edge device. Their on-device training method, Pock-Engine, determines which parts of a huge machine-learning model need to be updated to improve accuracy, and only stores and computes with those specific pieces.
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Technology & Society: Energy
Sandia engineers convert excess renewable electricity into heat that gets stored in piles of gravel.
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Developed by a team led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a self-assembling nanosheet could significantly extend the shelf life of consumer products. And because the new material is recyclable, it could also enable a sustainable manufacturing approach that keeps single-use packaging and electronics out of landfills.
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
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: 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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Q&A: Materials
Doctor Sergiy Kalnaus and his team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a framework for designing solid-state batteries that focuses on their underlying mechanics.
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Application Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Researchers from MIT Lincoln Laboratory and their collaborators at the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Ultrasound Research and Translation have developed a new medical imaging device: the Noncontact Laser Ultrasound (NCLUS).
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Application Briefs: Aerospace
As part of the NASA’s Perseverance rover, MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment), has generated oxygen for the 16th and final time, successfully completing its mission goal.
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Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
Researchers from Northwestern University have collaborated on the implementation of an accurate, low-cost, and easy-to-use test for detecting toxic levels of fluoride in water. The new biosensor device has been field tested in Kenya.
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Briefs: Materials
In Penn’s Clean Energy Conversions Lab, researchers are repurposing waste from industrial mines, storing carbon pulled from the atmosphere into newly formed rock. The team sees great environmental potential in mine tailings.
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Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Portable Laser-Guided Robotic Metrology
Innovators at the NASA Glenn Research Center have developed the PLGRM system, which allows an installed antenna to be characterized in an aircraft hangar. All PLGRM components can be packed onto pallets, shipped, and easily operated.
Briefs: Aerospace
Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have introduced a method for robust flight navigation agents to master vision-based fly-to-target tasks in intricate, unfamiliar environments.
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