Electronics & Software

Laser Attack Blinds Autonomous Vehicles, Deleting Pedestrians and Confusing Cars

Research reveals that expertly timed lasers shined at an approaching LIDAR system can create a blind spot in front of the vehicle.

Quantum-Limit-Approaching Chemical Sensing Chip

Study shows improvements to chemical sensing chip that aims to quickly and accurately identify drugs and other trace chemicals.

Ocean Platform Motion Control

NASA engineers have developed a new approach to mitigating unwanted motion in floating structures. Ideally suited to applications including offshore wind energy platforms and barges, the innovation uses water ballast as a motion damping fluid.

Manufacturing Rotational Mechanisms with Integrated Sensors

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.

Capturing the Movements of Dancers Has Wide Applications

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.

Touchless Switches Provide a Hygienic User Interface Option

Touchless switches are an ideal solution for industries such as food, beverage, pharmaceuticals, medical, and chemicals where sanitary design is important. They are also useful for protecting the well-being of users in everyday commercial applications.

A Vertical Electrochemical Transistor to Revolutionize Bioelectronics

A Northwestern University research team has developed a revolutionary transistor that is expected be ideal for lightweight, flexible, high-performance bioelectronics. The electrochemical transistor is compatible with blood and water and can amplify important signals.

A Thin, Flexible OLED Display

Imagine a thin, digital display so flexible that you can wrap it around your wrist, fold it in any direction, or even curve it over your car’s steering wheel. Well, imagine no more — researchers at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago have designed such a material.

Building Technology to Clean Up Space

In 1978, NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler theorized that an increasing amount of space pollution would lead to more collisions between objects in orbit, and thus more debris — the Kessler Syndrome. Multiple teams of researchers are working on solutions.

Imaging Space Debris in High Resolution

A team has introduced a new method for taking high-res images of fast-moving and rotating objects in space, such as satellites or debris in low-Earth orbit.

Getting NASA Data to the Ground with Lasers

The Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) will usher in a new era of laser communications.

Fully Stretchable Fabric-Based Lithium-Ion Battery

The future of wearable technology just got a big boost thanks to a team of University of Houston researchers who designed, developed, and delivered a successful prototype of a fully stretchable fabric-based lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery.

A Solvent-Free Process to Make Better, Cheaper Li-ion Battery Electrodes

A team Led by Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) researcher Yan Wang has developed a solvent-free process to manufacture Li-ion battery electrodes that are greener, cheaper, and charge faster than electrodes currently on the market.

Advancing High-Energy-Density Devices

In critical applications such as electric vehicles, there is a growing demand for a device that can efficiently produce both high power and high energy over a significant number of cycles.

An Energy-Storing Concrete-Based Supercapacitor

Two of humanity’s most ubiquitous historical materials, cement, and carbon black may form the basis for a novel, low-cost energy storage system, according to a new study by MIT researchers.

Novel Light-Field Sensor for 3D Scene Construction Has Unprecedented Angular Resolution

A research team has developed a 3D imaging sensor that has an extremely high angular resolution — it can distinguish points of an object separated by an angular distance, of as little as 0.0018°. The sensor operates on a unique angle-to-color conversion principle.

NeuWS Camera Overcomes Light Scattering With Full-Motion Video

Engineers have created full-motion video technology that could potentially be used to make cameras that peer through fog, smoke, driving rain, murky water, skin, bone, and other media that reflect scattered light and obscure objects from view.

Transferring Data with Many Colors of Light Simultaneously

Researchers have demonstrated an energy-efficient method for transferring larger quantities of data over the fiber-optic cables that connect the nodes. This new technology improves on previous attempts to transmit multiple signals simultaneously over the same fiber-optic cables.

A First-Of-Its-Kind Integrated Optical Isolator

A team of researchers led by electrical engineer Marko Lončar at SEAS has developed a method for building a highly efficient integrated isolator that’s seamlessly incorporated into an optical chip made of lithium niobate.

Detecting Threats Beyond the Limits of Human, Sensor Sight

A new patented software system can find the curves of motion in streaming video and images from satellites, drones, and far-range security cameras and turn them into signals to find and track moving objects as small as one pixel.

Quantum Computing Architecture May Enable High-Fidelity Communication

MIT researchers have developed a quantum computing architecture that aims to enable extensible, high-fidelity communication between superconducting quantum processors.

Future-Proofing Applications with Industrial Ethernet

While there may still be times when proprietary or serial communications are useful, the wide availability and low cost of high-performance industrial-specific devices and installation media are making industrial Ethernet the best approach for future-proofing applications and operating most efficiently.

New Wireless System for Greater 5G Access

A new paper on wireless connectivity from researchers at the lab of Dinesh Bharadia, an affiliate of the UC San Diego Qualcomm Institute (QI), introduces a new technique for increasing access to the 5G-and-beyond millimeter wave (mmWave) network.

Lightweight, Self-Deployable Helical Antenna

NASA's newly developed antenna is lightweight (at or below 2 grams), low volume (at or below 1.2 cm3), and low stowage thickness (approx. 0.7 mm), all while delivering high performance (at or above 10 dBi gain).

Wearable RFID Sensor Tags Yield Extended Operational Times

The technology exploits the inherently passive nature of RFID to approximate the services provided by traditional active Internet of Things (IoT) protocols like ZigBee and Bluetooth.