Tech Briefs

Better Texture for Better Batteries

To create the new batteries needed for EVs, mobile devices, and renewable energy storage, researchers have explored new materials, new designs, new configurations, and new chemistry. But one aspect — the texture of the metals used — has been historically overlooked. Read on to learn more.

A Hopping Robot That Can Leap and Land Like a Squirrel

University of California Berkeley biologists and engineers have designed a hopping robot that can stick a landing on a narrow perch. The feat is a big step in the design of more agile robots, ones that can leap among the trusses and girders of buildings under construction or robots that can monitor the environment in tangled forests or tree canopies. Read on to learn more.

A Lightweight Floating Robot Replicates Nature

Researchers have developed a compact and versatile robot that can maneuver through tight spaces and transport payloads much heavier than itself. Smaller than a credit card and weighing 6 grams, the nimble swimming robot is ideal for environments with limited space like rice fields, or for performing inspections in waterborne machines. Read on to learn more.

Tape-Based Robot Reaches Far When Extended

It’s a game a lot of us played as children — and maybe even later in life: unspooling measuring tape to see how far it would extend before bending. But to engineers at the University of California San Diego, this game was an inspiration, suggesting that measuring tape could become a great material for a robotic gripper. Read on to learn more about their robot, GRIP-tape.

Wearable Sensors Provide Real-Time Measurements of Sweat Rate and Electrolytes and Metabolites in Sweat

Researchers developed wearable skin sensors that can detect what’s in a person’s sweat. Using the sensors, monitoring perspiration could bypass the need for more invasive procedures like blood draws and provide real-time updates on health problems such as dehydration or fatigue. Read on to learn more.

Ultra-Sensitive Sensor with Gold Nanoparticle Array

Researchers have developed a new type of sensor platform using a gold nanoparticle array. The sensor is made up of a series of gold disk-shaped nanoparticles on a glass slide. When an infrared laser is pointed at a precise arrangement of the particles, they start to emit unusual amounts of ultraviolet light. Read on to learn more.

Using Flying Insects to Drop Sensors

Researchers have created a 98-milligram sensor system — about one tenth the weight of a jellybean or less than one-hundredth of an ounce — that can ride aboard a small drone or an insect, such as a moth, until it gets to its destination. Then, when a researcher sends a Bluetooth command, the sensor is released from its perch and can fall up to 72 feet — from about the sixth floor of a building — and land without breaking. Once on the ground, the sensor can collect data, such as temperature or humidity, for almost three years.

Fast-Charging, Long-Running, Bendable Supercapacitor

This technology has potential as a portable power supply in several applications, including electric vehicles, cellphones, and wearable technology.

High-Performance Hybrid Solar Energy Converter

Researchers have developed a hybrid solar energy converter that generates electricity and steam with high efficiency and low cost. The hybrid converter utilizes an approach that more fully captures the whole spectrum of sunlight. Read on to learn more about it.

Anode-Free Solid-State Batteries: Beyond Li-ion’s Limitations

A team led by Kelsey Hatzell, Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, has uncovered insights that could help power a new type of battery, called an anode-free solid-state battery, past Li-ion’s limitations. Read on to learn more about it.

Single-Step 3D-Printing Process to Build Robots

The piezoelectric “meta-bot” is capable of propulsion, movement, sensing, and decision-making.

Robotic System for Infrastructure Reconnaissance

Innovators at NASA Johnson Space Center have developed a robotic system whose primary structural platform, or “orb,” can be injected into a pipe network and perform reconnaissance of piping infrastructure and other interior volumes. When deployed, this technology uses throttled fluid flow from a companion device for passive propulsion. Read on to learn more.

Tiny Magnetic Robot Can Take 3D Scans from Inside Your Body

Researchers have developed a tiny magnetic robot that can take 3D scans from deep within the body and could revolutionize early cancer detection. The team, led by engineers from the University of Leeds, said this is the first time high-resolution 3D ultrasound images taken from a probe deep inside the gastrointestinal tract, or gut, have been generated. Read on to learn more.

Soft Sensing, Self-Healing Materials for Robotic Hands and Arms

These materials can detect when they are damaged, take the necessary steps to temporarily heal themselves, and then resume work.

Carbon Fiber-Carbon Nanotube Yarn Hybrid Reinforcement

Innovators at the NASA Glenn Research Center have developed a toughened hybrid reinforcement material made from carbon fiber and carbon nanotube (CNT) yarn for use in polymer matrix composites (PMCs). The new material improves toughness and damping properties of PMCs, enhancing impact resistance, fatigue life, as well as structural longevity. Read on to learn more.

A New Method to Design Better Metallic Materials

In a new study, researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign reported that automated high-resolution electron imaging can capture the nanoscale deformation events that lead to metal failure and breakage at the origin of metal failure. Read on to learn more.

Noninvasive Imaging Method Can Penetrate Deeper Into Living Tissue

Metabolic imaging is a noninvasive method that enables clinicians and scientists to study living cells using laser light, which can help them assess disease progression and treatment responses. But light scatters when it shines into biological tissue, limiting how deeply it can penetrate and hampering the resolution of captured images. Now, MIT researchers have developed a new technique that more than doubles the usual depth limit of metabolic imaging. Read on to learn more.

New Study Showcases 3D Photonics with Record Performance for AI

Artificial intelligence systems promise transformative advancements, yet their growth has been limited by energy inefficiencies and bottlenecks in data transfer. Researchers at Columbia Engineering have unveiled a groundbreaking solution: a 3D photonic-electronic platform that achieves unprecedented energy efficiency and bandwidth density, paving the way for next-generation AI hardware. Read on to learn more.

Revolutionizing Dynamic Facial Projection Mapping: A Leap Forward in Augmented Reality

Augmented reality has become a hot topic in the entertainment, fashion, and makeup industries. Though a few different technologies exist in these fields, dynamic facial projection mapping is among the most sophisticated and visually stunning ones. Read on to learn more about it.

Ultra-Broadband Photonic Chip Boosts Optical Signals

Researchers have developed a photonic chip-based traveling wave parametric amplifier that achieves ultra-broadband signal amplification in an unprecedentedly compact form. Read on to learn more about it.

Researchers Pave the Way for a New Era in Medical Imaging

New technology developed by researchers at the University of Houston could revolutionize medical imaging and lead to faster, more precise and more cost-effective alternatives to traditional diagnostic methods. Read on to learn more.

New Smart Sensor Takes the Pain Out of Wound Monitoring

A major challenge in self-powered wearable sensors for health care monitoring is distinguishing different signals when they occur at the same time. Researchers addressed this issue by uncovering a new property of a sensor material, enabling the team to develop a new type of flexible sensor that can accurately measure both temperature and physical strain simultaneously but separately to more precisely pinpoint various signals. Read on to learn more.

Scientists Use Distant Sensor to Monitor American Samoa Earthquake Swarm

Residents of the Manu’a Islands in American Samoa were feeling the earth shake, raising concerns of an imminent volcanic eruption or tsunami. Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey used machine learning and a technique called template matching on shaking data recorded from a single seismic sensor located 250 kilometers away to locate the source of the shaking. Read on to learn more.

Researchers Pioneer Nanosensor for Real-Time Iron Detection in Plants

Researchers have developed a groundbreaking near-infrared fluorescent nanosensor capable of simultaneously detecting and differentiating between iron forms — Fe(II) and Fe(III) — in living plants. Read on to learn more about it.

A New, Simple Method to Speed Cache Sifting

Computer scientists have invented a highly effective, yet incredibly simple, algorithm to decide which items to toss from a web cache to make room for new ones. Known as SIEVE, the new open-source algorithm holds the potential to transform the management of web traffic on a large scale. Read on to learn more.

New Method Makes Designing a Metamaterial Cell Easy

Researchers from MIT and the Institute of Science and Technology Austria have developed a computational technique that makes it easier to quickly design a metamaterial cell from smaller building blocks like interconnected beams or thin plates, and then evaluate the resulting metamaterial’s properties. Read on to learn more.

Using Chemistry Modeling Software to Detect Conditions for Microbial Life on Icy Worlds

Southwest Research Institute is working to expand software normally used to model electrolytes and predict corrosion and turn it into a tool that can help determine whether ice-covered worlds have the right conditions for microbial life. Read on to learn more.

Implantable Transmitter for Wireless Sensor Nodes

An invention that uses microchip technology in implantable devices and other wearable products such as smart watches can be used to improve biomedical devices including those used to monitor people with glaucoma and heart disease. Read on to learn more.