Electrical/​Electronics

Access our comprehensive library of electrical and electronics technical briefs from engineering experts at NASA and major government, university, and commercial laboratories.

33
-1
0
30
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Monitoring the success of surgery on blood vessels is challenging, as the first sign of trouble often comes too late. A new device could make it easier for doctors to monitor the success of blood vessel surgery.
Feature Image
Briefs: Imaging
By using artificial intelligence, researchers are developing a system that can automatically identify buildings after disasters and make an initial determination of whether they are damaged and how serious that damage might be.
Feature Image
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
IO-Link is a digital advancement combining the essential electrical and electronic characteristics of other connectivity methods. The resulting devices and architecture are enabling designers to create more intelligent equipment, streamline installation, and reduce overall costs.
Feature Image
Briefs: Materials
The nanoscale electronic parts in devices like smartphones are solid, static objects that once designed and built cannot transform into anything else. But a team from University of California Irvine has reported the discovery of nanoscale devices that can transform into many different shapes and sizes even though they exist in solid states.
Feature Image
Briefs: Design
This advancement, one of the first of its kind, enables a useful new capability for a variety of applications, including improved prostheses, haptics for new modalities in augmented reality (AR), and thermally modulated therapeutics for applications such as pain management. The technology also has a variety of potential industrial and research applications.
Feature Image
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
The miniscule wires — the size of transistors on silicon chips or one thousandth of the breadth of the finest human hair — are made completely of natural amino acids and heme molecules, found in proteins such as hemoglobin, which transports oxygen in red blood cells.
Feature Image
Briefs: Materials
Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed electronic “stickers” that measure the force exerted by one object upon another. The force stickers are wireless, run without batteries and fit in tight spaces. That makes them versatile for a wide range of applications.
Feature Image
Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
A research team has successfully overcome the limitations of soft strain sensors by integrating computer vision technology into optical sensors. The team developed a sensor technology known as computer vision-based optical strain (CVOS) during its study. Unlike conventional sensors reliant on electrical signals, CVOS sensors employ computer vision and optical sensors to analyze microscale optical patterns, extracting data regarding changes.
Feature Image
Briefs: Aerospace
Meet Air-Guardian: A system developed by researchers at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). As modern pilots grapple with an onslaught of information from multiple monitors, especially during critical moments, Air-Guardian acts as a proactive co-pilot; a partnership between human and machine, rooted in understanding attention.
Feature Image
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
MIT researchers developed a machine-learning technique called Diffusion-CCSP. Diffusion models learn to generate new data samples that resemble samples in a training dataset by iteratively refining their output.
Feature Image
Briefs: Software
Researchers from MIT, the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, and elsewhere have developed a technique that enables deep-learning models to efficiently adapt to new sensor data directly on an edge device. Their on-device training method, Pock-Engine, determines which parts of a huge machine-learning model need to be updated to improve accuracy, and only stores and computes with those specific pieces.
Feature Image
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Harvard researchers have realized a key milestone in the quest for stable, scalable quantum computing, an ultra-high-speed technology that will enable game-changing advances in a variety of fields, including medicine, science, and finance.
Feature Image
Briefs: Energy
The NIST camera is made up of grids of ultrathin electrical wires, cooled to near absolute zero, in which current moves with no resistance until a wire is struck by a photon. In these superconducting-nanowire cameras, the energy imparted by even a single photon can be detected because it shuts down the superconductivity at a particular location (pixel) on the grid. Combining all the locations and intensities of all the photons makes up an image.
Feature Image
Briefs: Test & Measurement
Scientists from the Institute of Geophysics at ETH Zurich, working together with the Swiss Federal Institute of Metrology (METAS), have found an inexpensive method that enables accurate earthquake measurements even on the ocean floor and in less developed countries.
Feature Image
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Photoelectric (PE) sensors represent a discrete sensor technology widely used throughout industry. They use the presence or absence of light to provide an on/off output to supervisory automation and monitoring systems, and are often the better choice for sensing manufacturing products.
Feature Image
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Making Satellite, Ground Communication More Effective
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Moussa N’Gom has devised a method to make communications between satellites and the ground more effective — regardless of the weather.
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Moving robots demands a lot of energy, and batteries, the typical power source, limit lifetime and raise environmental concerns. Researchers at the University of Washington have now created MilliMobile, a tiny, self-driving robot powered only by surrounding light or radio waves.
Feature Image
Briefs: Robotics, Automation & Control
Centimeter-scale walking and crawling robots are in demand both for their ability to explore tight or cluttered environments and for their low fabrication costs. Pulling from origami-inspired construction, researchers have crafted a more simplified approach to the design and fabrication of these robots.
Feature Image
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
When multiple drones are working together in the same airspace, perhaps spraying pesticide over a field of corn, there’s a risk they might crash into each other. To help avoid these costly crashes, MIT researchers developed a system called MADER in 2020.
Feature Image
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Devices of all types are becoming more intelligent and may include native Ethernet. However, there are many opportunities where proven serial communications will remain the best choice for cost-effective communications.
Feature Image
Briefs: RF & Microwave Electronics
MIT researchers have demonstrated the first system for ultra-low-power underwater networking and communication, which can transmit signals across kilometer-scale distances. This technique uses about one-millionth the power that existing underwater communication methods use.
Feature Image
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Testing Smart Surfaces to Improve Wireless Communication
Researchers at UBC Okanagan are looking at ways to improve cell phone connectivity and localization abilities by examining “smart” surfaces that can bounce signals from a tower to customers to improve the link.
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Exploiting Signals Broadcast by Multi-Constellation LEO Satellites
Researchers have developed an algorithm that can “eavesdrop” on any signal from a satellite and use it to locate any point on Earth, much like GPS. The study represents the first time an algorithm was able to exploit signals broadcast by multi-constellation low-Earth orbit satellites.
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
New research in quantum computing at Sandia National Laboratories is moving science closer to being able to overcome supply-chain challenges and restore global security during future periods of unrest.
Feature Image
Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
Study shows improvements to chemical sensing chip that aims to quickly and accurately identify drugs and other trace chemicals.
Feature Image
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
An ultra-small actuator has nanometer-scale precision.
Feature Image
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Researchers have outlined a new optical communication protocol that exploits spatial patterns of light for multi-dimensional encoding in a manner that does not require the patterns to be recognized, thus overcoming the prior limitation of modal distortion in noisy channels.
Feature Image
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Integrating sensors into rotational mechanisms could make it possible for engineers to build smart hinges that know when a door has been opened, or gears inside a motor that tell a mechanic how fast they are rotating. Engineers have now developed a way to easily integrate sensors into these types of mechanisms.
Feature Image
Briefs: Semiconductors & ICs
Praneeth Namburi is a research scientist at the MIT.nano Immersion Lab. One project that bridges the physical and digital worlds uses VR simulations to train people to fabricate computer chips and semiconductors.
Feature Image

Webcasts

Feature Image
On-Demand Webinars: Defense

From Data to Decision: How AI Enhances Warfighter Readiness

Feature Image
Upcoming Webinars: Aerospace

April Battery & Electrification Summit

Feature Image
Upcoming Webinars: Manufacturing & Prototyping

Tech Update: 3D Printing for Transportation in 2024

Feature Image
Upcoming Webinars: Materials

Unleashing Epoxy's Potential: Ensuring Hermetic Sealing in Modern...

Feature Image
Upcoming Webinars: Test & Measurement

Building an Automotive EMC Test Plan

Feature Image
Upcoming Webinars: Aerospace

The Moon and Beyond from a Thermal Perspective

Videos