News

For the first time on the battlefield, maneuver and logistics forces will share situational awareness and messaging, forming a complete and seamless operational picture. The new capability, delivered by integrating the vehicle-based Movement Tracking System (MTS) into the Army's...

The U.S. Army is harnessing the elements to help reduce casualties from sniper attacks on forward operating bases. The U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command's research laboratory and aviation missile and communications-electronics RD&E centers - the Army Research Laboratory...

Exoskeletons often fail to allow the wearer to perform natural joint movements, and are also generally heavy, which causes fatigue. For applications where a person only needs partial gait assistance from a robot, researchers from Harvard University's Wyss Institute researchers are pursuing the use...

Many researchers around the world are seeking ways to “scrub” carbon dioxide from the emissions of fossil-fuel power plants, as a way of curbing the gas that is considered most responsible for global climate change. Most such systems, however, rely on complex plumbing to divert the steam used...

Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have developed a new algorithm that can accurately measure the heart rates of people depicted in ordinary digital video by analyzing imperceptibly small head movements that accompany the rush of blood caused by the heart’s...

A new laser shows what objects are made of and could help military aircraft identify hidden dangers such as weapons arsenals far below. The system, which is made of off-the-shelf telecommunications technology, emits a broadband beam of infrared light. While most lasers emit light of one wavelength, or...

3D printing can now be used to print lithium-ion microbatteries the size of a grain of sand. The printed microbatteries could supply electricity to tiny devices in fields from medicine to communications, including many that have lingered on lab benches for lack of a battery small enough to fit the device, yet...

A new study by Army researchers looks at inserting carbon nanotubes into the structural design of helicopter rotor blades to improve performance. The U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command's research laboratory hopes this approach could lead to the design and...

Tiny unmanned craft — some fly, others dart under the waves — are being developed at the University of Florida. They can spy on hurricanes at close range without getting blown willy-nilly, while sensors onboard collect and send in real time the data scientists need to predict the intensity and...

Thanks to its legs, whose design faithfully reproduces feline morphology, EPFL’s four-legged “cheetah-cub robot” has the same advantages as its model: It is small, light and fast. Still in its experimental stage, the robot will serve as a platform for research in locomotion and biomechanics.

Solar technologies must convert solar energy into electrochemical energy efficiently and on a massive scale. A key to meeting this challenge may lie in the ability to test such energy conversion schemes on the micro-scale.

While researchers have come up with hierarchical structures in the design of new materials, going from a computer model to the production of physical artifacts has been a persistent challenge. Hierarchical structures that give natural composites their strength are self-assembled through electrochemical reactions, a...

In the near future, a buzz in your belt or a pulse from your jacket may give you instructions on how to navigate your surroundings. Think of it as tactile Morse code: vibrations from a wearable, GPS-linked device that tell you to turn right or left, or stop, depending on the pattern of pulses you feel. Such a...

University of California, San Diego engineers have developed new image processing techniques for rapid exploration and characterization of fires by small, Segway-like robotic vehicles.

Reinforcement learning is a technique common in computer science in which a computer system learns how best to solve some problem through trial-and- error. Classic applications of reinforcement learning involve problems as diverse as robot navigation, network administration and automated...

In research that is helping to lay the groundwork for the electronics of the future, University of Delaware scientists have confirmed the presence of a magnetic field generated by electrons which scientists had theorized existed, but that had never been proven until now. The recent findings expand the...

Anyone who has flown in an airplane knows about turbulence, or when the flow of a fluid — in this case, the flow of air over the wings — becomes chaotic and unstable. For more than a century, the field of fluid mechanics has posited that turbulence scales with inertia, and so massive things,...

Norwegian research scientists will contribute to realizing the concept of storing electricity at the bottom of the sea. The energy will be stored with the help of high water pressure. The idea of an underwater pumped hydroelectric power plant may sound like Jules Verne fiction, but then it was...

Michigan Technological University’s invisibility cloak researchers have moved the bar on one of the holy grails of physics – making objects invisible. Just last month, Elena Semouchkina, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Michigan Tech, and her graduate student,...

According to recent polls, most Americans want the U.S. to place more emphasis on developing solar power. A major impediment, however, is the cost to manufacture, install and maintain solar panels. Simply put, most people and businesses cannot afford to place them on their...

Echolocation is a powerful technique that uses sound or ultrasound waves to locate objects and surfaces. Ships and submarines, for example, use it to avoid collisions, and dolphins and microbats use it to locate prey (see image). A team from the A*STAR Institute of Microelectronics in...

A NASA team designed a sophisticated microwave radiometer to overcome the pitfalls that have plagued similar Earth-observing instruments in the past.

Picture this. You are walking down the street with a friend when a shot is fired. The two of you duck behind the nearest cover and you pull out your smartphone. A map of the neighborhood pops up on its screen with a large red arrow indicating the direction from which the shot came.

The development of a new test asset for Army aviation sensors brings results and solutions at a faster pace. Named the Mobile Apache Sensors Telemetry Trailer, the new sensor test trailer, a collaborated development effort by the Apache Project Office and the Redstone Test Center's Aviation Flight...

A Sandia engineer who trained U.S. soldiers to avoid improvised explosive devices (IEDs) has developed a fertilizer that helps plants grow but can’t detonate a bomb. It’s an alternative to ammonium nitrate, an agricultural staple that is also the raw ingredient in most of the IEDs in Afghanistan....

An MIT team has developed a method for attaching molecules to metal surfaces. The new approach uses a family of chemicals called carbenes to attach other substances to gold — and potentially to other material surfaces as well. Carbenes could function as “surface anchors” to link many...

Combined with state-of-the-art micro-sculpting techniques, a new resin holds promise for making customized electrodes for fuel cells or batteries, as well as biosensor interfaces for medical uses.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researchers have developed a cradle and app for the iPhone that uses the device’s built-in camera and processing power as a biosensor to detect toxins, proteins, bacteria, viruses and other molecules.

By modifying the underlying network of cellulose fibers, etching off surface “fluff” and applying a thin chemical coating, researchers have created a new type of paper that repels a wide variety of liquids, including water and oil.