INSIDER

World’s Smallest Programmable, Autonomous Robots

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and University of Michigan have created the world’s smallest fully programmable, autonomous robots: microscopic swimming machines that can...

Bio-Hybrid Robots Turn Food Waste into Functional Machines

Although many roboticists today turn to nature to inspire their designs, even bioinspired robots are usually fabricated from non-biological materials like metal, plastic, and...

Building Bots on a Budget

Ph.D. student in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, Yufeng Chi is part of a team of Berkeley engineers that has developed Berkeley Humanoid Lite, a low-cost, open-source robot made of...

Stanford Researchers Develop Flexible Color-Changing Material

Stanford researchers have developed a flexible material that can quickly change its surface texture and colors, offering potential applications in camouflage, art, robotics, and...

A New Tool for Measuring Femtosecond Lasers

Ultrashort laser pulses — that are shorter than a millionth of a millionth of a second — have transformed fundamental science, engineering and medicine. Despite this, their ultrashort duration...

NVIDIA Includes Ethernet Photonics in New Six-Chip AI Rubin Platform

NVIDIA is bringing Ethernet networking with co-packaged optics to artificial intelligence (AI) factories, enabling scale-out and scale-across on the NVIDIA Rubin platform...

Improved Safety, Durability, and Power: A Carbon-Based Battery Materials Breakthrough

This research demonstrates a new way to make carbon-based battery materials much safer, longer lasting, and more powerful by fundamentally redesigning how fullerene molecules are connected.

Manufacturing the World's Tiniest Light-Emitting Diodes

Miniaturization ranks as the driving force behind the semiconductor industry. The tremendous gains in computer performance since the 1950s are largely due to the fact that ever smaller...

Scientists Create Superconducting Semiconductor Material

Scientists have long sought to make semiconductors that are also superconducting, thereby enhancing their speed and energy efficiency and enabling new quantum technologies. However,...

New Cooling Technique Could Make Computer Chips More Powerful

As more devices get piled onto computer chips to increase processing power capacity, heat generation becomes increasingly concentrated. This heat must be removed to keep chip...

An Electronic Fiber for Stretchable Sensing

The phrase ‘liquid metal’ may bring to mind something hazardous, like mercury or molten steel. But in the Laboratory of Photonic Materials and Fiber Devices (FIMAP) in EPFL’s School of...

Knitting Machine Makes Solid 3D Objects

A new prototype of a knitting machine creates solid, knitted shapes, adding stitches in any direction — forward, backward, and diagonal — so users can construct a wide variety of shapes and add...

Space Robotics at the Edge of the Unknown

The USC Department of Astronautical Engineering (ASTE) is expanding its focus on space robotics, with an emphasis on autonomous systems that can operate in extreme and unmapped environments....

‘Metabots’ Shapeshift from Flat Sheets into Hundreds of Structures

Researchers have created a class of robots made from thin sheets of material that can snap into hundreds of stable shapes — allowing them to execute a wide variety of...

The Agility Equation: Discovering the Math of Human Movement for Robotics and Footwear

Researchers from UMass Amherst are working to define the primary mathematical components of running. Compared to walking, much less is understood about...

Researchers Discover Breakthrough Materials to Enhance Light-Based Computers

Researchers have been developing computers that deploy light, or photons, rather than electricity to power storage and calculations. These light-based computers...

NASA Mission to Test Organic Electro-Optic Materials in Space

NLM Photonics has confirmed that its patented silicon organic hybrid (SOH) photonic chips, featuring Selerion-HTX™ and JRD1, have successfully arrived at the International...

A New Way to Build Soft Robots That Can Walk on Water

Imagine a tiny robot, no bigger than a leaf, gliding across a pond’s surface like a water strider. One day, devices like this could track pollutants, collect water samples or scout...

Berkeley Alums Develop At-Home Robotic Rehabilitation Device

Berkeley alumni Todd Roberts (MEng’20 ME) and Owen Kent (B.A.’17 Film) have shown how an idea can turn into a product that makes a difference. The pair first developed Reflex,...

Using Generative AI to create Realistic Virtual Training Environments for Robots

Chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude have experienced a meteoric rise in usage over the past three years because they can help you with a wide range of tasks....

Robotic Skin Allows Tiny Robots to Navigate Complex, Fragile Environments

Researchers have developed a soft robotic skin that enables vine robots a few millimeters wide to navigate convoluted paths and fragile environments. To accomplish...

Powerful and Precise Multi-color Lasers Now Fit on a Single Chip

A few years ago, researchers in Michal Lipson’s Columbia Engineering lab noticed something remarkable. They were working on a project to design high-power chips that could...

Breaking the Thermal Conductivity Barrier with Boron Arsenide

University of Houston researchers have made a groundbreaking discovery in thermal conductivity, overturning an existing theory that boron arsenide (BAs) couldn’t compete with...

Using Streetlamps as EV Chargers

Electric vehicles (EVs) can have lower fuel costs and reduce emissions relative to cars that use gasoline, but they are only a practical option if drivers have convenient ways to charge them. For people who...

Light-Powered Motor Fits Inside a Strand of Hair

For more than 30 years, researchers have been trying to create small gears in order to construct micro-engines. But progress stalled at 0.1 millimeters, as it was not possible to build the...

MultiRobot Team Walks, Flies, and Rolls

Introducing X1: The world's first multirobot system that integrates a humanoid robot with a transforming drone that can launch off the humanoid's back and, later, drive away. The versatile team can...

Programming Robots with Rubber Bands

From sorting objects in a warehouse to navigating furniture while vacuuming, robots today use sensors, software control systems, and moving parts to perform tasks. The harder the task or more complex the...

Using an AI-Powered Robotic Unicycle to Study How People Learn Complex Motor Skills

The path to recovery for stroke survivors taking their first tentative steps, or individuals navigating daily challenges from balance disorders, often feels...

Product Focus: Freudenberg Expands Portfolio with Application-Specific Electric Mobility Solutions

As the mobility industry rapidly evolves, Freudenberg continues to expand its portfolio with high-performance, application-specific solutions...