Magazine

The Impact of AI Across the Industrial Value Chain

It is no exaggeration to say that AI will be the next big leap across all of industry, reimagining the way people work, products are designed, and factories are operated. But AI doesn’t mean a fully autonomous future but rather a harmony, uniting people and technology in a way that plays to the strength of both to achieve a result greater than what either could achieve alone. Read on to learn more.

When Automation Goes Wrong: Lessons from the Field

Automation is a powerful tool, but only when designed and implemented with a systems-level mindset. Failures rarely stem from the automation hardware itself but often result from gaps in planning, integration, or life cycle support. Read on to learn more.

Collaborative Robots Need More Sophisticated Sensors

The transition from isolated, pre-programmed robots to adaptive cobots marks a significant advancement in industrial automation — one that depends not only on software but on a new generation of sensing technologies. Read on to learn more.

Monitoring the Injection Molding Process to Improve Quality and Lower Costs

The digitalization of industrial measurement solutions has come a long way. With the help of these levers, plastic injection molders have effective tools at hand to tackle current challenges, be it cost pressure and competitiveness, high product quality, or sustainability requirements. Read on to learn more.

New App Performs Real-Time, Full-Body Motion Capture With a Mobile Device

Northwestern engineers have developed a new system for full-body motion capture — and it doesn’t require specialized rooms, expensive equipment, bulky cameras, or an array of sensors. Instead, it requires a simple mobile device. Read on to learn more.

Drones Can Detect Fires and Monitor Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Forest fire prevention and control agencies in São Carlos, in the interior of the state of São Paulo, Brazil, will soon have help from the sky to detect fires more quickly and combat them before they grow out of control, as researchers at the University of São Paulo are developing drones equipped with gas sensors and artificial intelligence systems to detect forest fires.

FAU Engineers Design New Autonomous System to Monitor Arctic Ice Melt

Researchers from the College of Engineering and Computer Science at Florida Atlantic University have proposed a design for an alternative, autonomous observational method, which holds promise for improving the autonomy of marine vehicles, aiding in maritime missions, and gaining a deeper understanding of how melting Arctic sea ice affects marine ecosystems. Read on to learn more.

Better Images for Humans and Computers

Maksym Kovalenko and his team have proposed a novel solution that allows them to utilize every photon of light for color recognition. For nearly a decade, they have been researching perovskite-based image sensors. In a new study published in Nature, they show that their new technology works. Read on to learn more.

Low-Power Hydrogen Sensor Detects Leaks in an Instant

KAUST researchers have invented a robust, highly sensitive, low-cost hydrogen sensor that outperforms available commercial detectors, offering a vital safeguard for the burgeoning hydrogen economy. Read on to learn more.

New Products

See the new products, including the VITA 93 QMC Mezzanine Modules from Acromag; fiber-optic sensors of the optoCONTROL CLS1000 series from Micro-Epsilon; AW-Lake's TG Series Gas Turbine Flow Meter; NewTek Sensors' advanced Linear Variable Differential Transformer specifically designed to withstand the extreme environments found in next-gen molten salt reactors; and more.

Implementing Predictive Maintenance

Predictive maintenance is based on condition monitoring, anomaly detection, and classification algorithms, and integrates predictive models which can estimate the remaining machine runtime. Read on to learn more about it and how to implement it.

How to Optimize Self-Powered Sensing

MIT researchers have developed a method that anyone can use to design an energy management interface between the harvester and the sensor load to minimize the drain on the harvester and maximize the amount of data that can be transmitted by the sensor. Read on to learn more via this Q&A with Daniel Monagle and Steven B. Leeb.

2025 Rising Star Awards Winners

SAE Media Group’s Women in Engineering: Rising Star Awards program shines the spotlight on trailblazers who not only excel in their respective domains but also stroke the flames of inspiration in others. This year’s awards program features six categories: Aerospace/Defense, Automotive/Transportation, Electronics, Manufacturing/Materials, Medical, and Robotics, Automation and AI. In this special section, you’ll meet the winners in all six categories.

Aerospace & Defense Rising Star Awards Winner 2025

Keshika Warnakula, Senior Flight Mechanics Engineer, Syos Aerospace, from Auckland, New Zealand is the 2025 Rising Star Award Winner for Aerospace and Defense.

Electronics Rising Star Awards Winner 2025

Samantha Shumberger, Senior Design Engineer, Molex, from Wellsville, PA, is the 2025 Rising Star Award Winner for Electronics.

Robotics, Automation & AI Rising Star Awards Winner 2025

Ipsita Mohanty, Co-Founder and Chief AI Architect, QApp from San Jose, CA, is the 2025 Rising Star Award Winner for Robotics, Automation & AI.

Automotive/Transportation Rising Star Awards Winner 2025

Sadiyah Sabah Chowdhury, Senior Technical Specialist in Technical Strategy & Integration, Cummins from Columbus, IN, is the 2025 Rising Star Award Winner for Automotive/Transportation.

Manufacturing Rising Star Awards Winner 2025

Mariam Sulleiman, Graduate Researcher, University of Texas at Austin from Austin, TX, is the 2025 Rising Star Award Winner for Manufacturing.

Medical Rising Star Awards Winner 2025

Debbie Teodorescu, Founder and Board Director, SurgiBox Inc.; Invasive & Heart Failure Cardiologist from Seattle, WA, is the 2025 Rising Star Award Winner for Medical.

Rising Star Awards 2025 Judges

Meet our esteemed panel of judges comprising of leaders from engineering and technology fields, who bring decades of experience and expertise to the evaluation process, ensuring fairness and rigor. These judges were hand-selected by SAE Media Group’s editorial team for their breadth of knowledge and experience in the industry.

How Through-Hole Reflow Technology Transforms Production

A new technology closes the gap and combines PCB production into a single process, leveraging the capabilities of SMT. The resulting through-hole reflow (THR) process allows for components to be mounted through those pre-drilled holes — but secured during the same soldering process as the SMT-designed components. Read on to learn more.

Meet SMSPDs: Superconducting Microwire Single-Photon Detectors

Plans are underway to create more powerful particle accelerators, whose collisions will unleash large subatomic storms. How will researchers sift through the chaos? Read on to find out.

AI Boosts Super-Resolution Microscopy

Researchers have provided a new open-source algorithm called Conditional Variational Diffusion Model (CVDM). Based on generative AI, this model improves the quality of images by reconstructing them from randomness. In addition, the CVDM is computationally less expensive than established diffusion models — and it can be easily adapted for a variety of applications. Read on to learn more.

Novel Flexible Terahertz Camera Can Inspect Objects with Diverse Shapes

A team of researchers from Tokyo Tech, led by Associate Professor Yukio Kawano, has designed a flexible and free-standing THz sensor array that can be used to image blind ends of irregularly shaped objects. Read on to learn more about it.

Ultra-Thin Cooling Solution for Mobile Devices Unlocks Slimmer, High-Performance Technology

Scientists from Nagoya University in Japan have developed an innovative cooling device — an ultra-thin loop heat pipe — that significantly improves heat control for electronic components in smartphones and tablets. Read on to learn more.

Finding the Length ‘Sweet Spot’ for Yarn-Shaped Supercapacitors

Researchers at North Carolina State University have now identified a “sweet spot” at which the length of a threadlike energy storage technology called a “yarn-shaped supercapacitor” yields the highest and most efficient flow of energy per unit length. Read on to learn more.

DC-DC Converter Unifies Power Switches on a Single Chip

University of California San Diego and CEA-Leti scientists have developed a ground-breaking piezoelectric-based DC-DC converter that unifies all power switches onto a single chip to increase power density. Read on to learn more about this new power topology, which extends beyond existing topologies and blends the advantages of piezoelectric converters with capacitive-based DC-DC converters.

Fiber Optic Sensing Technologies

Known as FOSS (for fiber optic sensing system), NASA’s technology portfolio combines advanced sensors and innovative algorithms into a robust package that accurately and cost-effectively monitors a host of critical parameters in real time. Read on to learn more.

Nanoparticles-Based Wearable Biosensors

A team of Caltech engineers has developed a technique for inkjet printing arrays of special nanoparticles that enables the mass production of long-lasting wearable sweat sensors. These sensors could be used to monitor a variety of biomarkers, such as vitamins, hormones, metabolites, and medications, in real time. Read on to learn more.