Magazine

Intelligent Building Blocks for a More Reliable Electric Grid

Radha Krishna Moorthy is lead researcher on an Oak Ridge National Laboratory project to create a new architecture to modernize the electric grid from the bottom up. The approach combines hardware and software to monitor equipment health, speed up communication and increase security.

Ensuring the Global Safety of Unattended Telescopes

The Las Cumbres Observatory relied on Pilz to develop safety systems for its automated telescopes. In addition to protecting people, a safety system is needed to help protect equipment in case of a malfunction.

After the Storm — Rapid Location of Damaged Utility Poles

Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a drone that can find and rapidly locate damaged utility poles.

Amplified Power of Traveling-Wave Tubes

Traveling-wave tubes designed for NASA are being used not only for satellite systems but also ground applications.

5Ws of a Smart Bandage

A new kind of smart bandage developed at Caltech may make treatment of chronic wounds easier, more effective, and less expensive.

Condition Monitoring Comes to Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises

Now, broader availability of sensors, evolving capabilities, and new digital platforms and tools are making IIoT capabilities more readily available and easy to manage with small teams.

How Artificial Intelligence Makes Quality Traceable Down to Component Level

Manufacturers can meet industry requirements thanks to the exact inspection of the individual components that is continuously improved using AI.

Controlling the Grind for Precision Photonics

As the tolerances for photonics systems become more demanding, controlling the grinding of optical components must also become more precise.

Lunar Lens: First Compact Flat Metalens Images Moon Surface

Using a new fabrication method, researchers developed a single-lens telescope and captured clear images of the lunar surface — achieving greater resolution of objects and much farther imaging distance than previous metalenses.

Wavelength-Multiplexed Diffractive Optical Processor Computes Hundreds of Linear Transformations in Parallel

Computing using light can potentially provide lower latency and reduced power consumption, benefiting from the parallelism of optical systems.

Ultrafast Beam-Steering Breakthrough at Sandia Labs

The ability to control light using a semiconductor device could allow low-power, relatively inexpensive sources like LEDs or flashlight bulbs to replace more powerful laser beams in new technologies.

Optical Switching at Record Speeds Opens Door for Ultrafast, Light-Based Electronics and Computers

The future of electronics will be based instead on using laser light to control electrical signals, opening the door for the establishment of “optical transistors” and the development of ultrafast optical electronics.

Hyperspectral Imaging: Making Rich Colors More Visible

Spectral measurement is thus the basis of remote sensing, allowing for highly accurate material analysis and image recognition.

New Products

See the New Products, including Variable Beam Expander, a modulator, Smart Fixture Mount Sensors, a pluggable module, and more.

Helping Machine Vision Go Beyond Human Programming

Facial recognition AI inspections will go beyond simple geometry. They will learn how makeup, tattoos, or clothing may conceal features that were previously used to identify someone.

Product of the Month

Learn more about the Product of the Month: Mitsubishi Electric Automation's MELSOFT Gemini 3D Simulator Software.

Products of Tomorrow

See the Products of Tomorrow, including silicon photonic MEMS, a micro-robotic arm, and more.

10 Surging Space Startups

As startups continue to make strides into space and beyond, this article spotlights 10 fast-growing startups (in no particular order) that are poised to disrupt space by bringing new innovations to market.

The Transformative Power of Innovations in Additive Materials

According to research, polymer AM technologies are forecasted to move into a multitude of industries over the next decade, with print production growing to nearly $26 billion annually by 2030.

Vision Sensing is Becoming More Accessible

Vision sensing systems are needed to improve operations in many industrial applications, where they can be arranged to detect the presence, position, and other characteristics of objects and products.

Wearable Sensor Uses Ultrasound to Provide On-the-Go Cardiac Imaging

Researchers have developed a wearable ultrasound device — about the size of a postage stamp — that can assess both the structure and function of the human heart.

Printing High-Fidelity Sensors

Printed radio frequency (RF) surface acoustic wave (SAW) sensor devices are a promising technology for providing highly reconfigurable, cost-effective, and multi-parameter sensing.

Artificial Skin Provides Haptic Feedback

The skin could help rehabilitation and enhance virtual reality by instantaneously adapting to a wearer's movements.

Robotic Wing Could Improve Drone Performance

Ornithological animals have always benefited from folding their wings during upstroke. So, a Swedish-Swiss research team has constructed a robotic wing that can flap like a bird.

Rapidly Configuring Robots for Lunar Exploration

A team of MIT engineers is designing a kit of universal robotic parts that an astronaut could easily mix and match to rapidly configure different robot “species” to fit various lunar missions.

Gecko-Inspired Climbing Soft Robot

The new robot, developed by engineers at the University of Waterloo, uses ultraviolet (UV) light and magnetic force to move on any surface, even up walls and across ceilings.

Fluid-Driven Actuators Enable Complex Motions in Soft Robots

A team of researchers has designed a new system of fluid-driven actuators that enable soft robots to achieve more complex motions. The researchers accomplished this by taking advantage of the very thing — viscosity — that had previously stymied the movement of such robots.