Electronics & Software

Soft, Bioelectronic Sensor Implant

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine and New York’s Columbia University have embedded transistors in a soft, conformable material to create a biocompatible sensor implant that monitors...

MIT Engineers Grow “High-Rise” 3D Chips

The electronics industry is approaching a limit to the number of transistors that can be packed onto the surface of a computer chip. So, chip manufacturers are looking to build up rather than out.

Neuromorphic Semiconductor Chip Learns and Corrects Itself

Existing computer systems have separate data processing and storage devices, making them inefficient for processing complex data like AI. A Korea Advanced Institute of Science and...

UxV/35: A New Approach to Lowering the Cost of Designing Drones

On the first episode of Season 7 of the Aerospace & Defense Technology podcast, Dom Koenig, Marketing Manager, Kairos Autonomi, explains how the UxV/35 standard could be used to lower the cost of designing and manufacturing drones in the future.

Product of the Month

See the product of the month: Darveen Co.'s SPC-9000 Series IP66 stainless steel touch panel PCs, which are specifically designed to meet high hygiene standards, making them ideal for food processing, pharmaceutical, and chemical industries, and humid or hot kitchen environments.

New on the Market

See what's new on the market, including Nikon Corporation's NEXIV VMF-K Series, a next-generation video measuring system; the surfaceCONTROL 3D snapshot sensors from Micro-Epsilon; InfraTec's INDU-SCAN base, a flexible and cost-effective thermography solution for use in industrial applications 24/7; Curtiss-Wright Actuation Division's Exlar® electric actuator product offerings; and more.

A New Approach to Autonomous Vehicle Safety

A team has programmed a robotic spacecraft simulator with what it calls s-FEAST: Safe Fault Estimation via Active Sensing Tree Search. Read on to learn more.

Pervasive Biocybernetic Adaptation

The technology has the potential for many applications including enhancing pilot training for peak performance and alertness, developing software, training programs, and services for well-being and healthcare, as well as revolutionize the gaming industry by creating interactive video games. Read on to learn more.

AI Discovers Stiff and Tough Microstructures

A team at MIT has moved beyond traditional trial-and-error methods to create materials with extraordinary performance through computational design. Their new system integrates physical experiments, physics-based simulations, and neural networks to navigate the discrepancies often found between theoretical models and practical results. Read on to learn more.

Cryogenic Flux Capacitor

NASA’s Cryogenic Flux Capacitor capitalizes on the energy storage capacity of liquefied gases. By exploiting a unique attribute of nano-porous materials, aerogel in this case, fluid commodities such as oxygen, hydrogen, methane, etc. can be stored in a molecular surface-adsorbed state. Read on to learn more.

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.

Quantum Sensing to Engineer Photonic Sensors

A Bristol-led team of physicists has found a way to operate mass manufacturable photonic sensors at the quantum limit. This breakthrough paves the way for practical applications such as monitoring greenhouse gases and cancer detection. Read on to learn more.

Visible-Light Lasers That Fit on a Fingertip

Researchers have created visible lasers of very pure colors from near-ultraviolet to near-infrared that fit on a fingertip. The colors of the lasers can be precisely tuned and extremely fast — up to 267 petahertz per second, which is critical for applications such as quantum optics. Read on to learn more.

Levitating Objects with Light

Researchers have designed a way to levitate and propel objects using only light by creating specific nanoscale patterning on the objects' surfaces. The work could be a step toward developing a spacecraft that could reach the nearest planet outside of our solar system in 20 years, powered and accelerated only by light. Read on to learn more.

Say Goodbye to the Dots and Dashes to Enhance Optical Storage Media

Purdue researchers have created technology aimed at replacing Morse code with colored “digital characters” to modernize optical storage. They are confident the advancement will help with the explosion of remote data storage during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Read on to learn more.

Providing Robots a Soft Touch Using 3D Printing

A recent study demonstrates that soft skin pads doubling as sensors made from thermoplastic urethane can be efficiently manufactured using 3D printers. Read on to learn more.

Building Quantum Computers of the Future

This advance could enable quantum computers that use programmable optical qubits or “spin-photon qubits” to connect quantum nodes across a remote network. It could also advance a quantum internet that is not only more secure but could also transmit more data than current optical-fiber information technologies. Read on to learn more.

Creating Materials with Stiffness, Thermal Insulation

Researchers have demonstrated the ability to engineer materials that are both stiff and capable of insulating against heat. This combination of properties is extremely unusual and holds promise for a range of applications, such as the development of new thermal insulation coatings for electronic devices. Read on to learn more.

A New Way to Stretch Diamond for Better Quantum Bits

A future quantum network may become less of a stretch thanks to researchers at the Argonne National Laboratory, the University of Chicago, and Cambridge University. By “stretching” thin films of diamond, they created quantum bits that can operate with significantly reduced equipment and expense. Read on to learn more.

A Dicing Proposition: Driving Zero Defects in Today’s Intelligent Vehicles

Read on to learn about the factors that go into driving zero defects in today’s intelligent vehicles.

7 Space Sustainability Startups

A renewed focus on space sustainability has led to the emergence of several new space startups that are thinking out of the box to find novel technology solutions to tackle space junk. Read on to take a look at seven such startups.

Designing Robotic Insects for Mechanical Pollination

MIT researchers are developing robotic insects that could someday swarm out of mechanical hives to rapidly perform precise pollination.