Imaging

How Robotic Micro-Actuators Are Enhancing Bone Healing

Smart implants that not only stabilize a fracture but also monitor the healing process from day one — and deliver targeted support when required — are currently being developed at Saarland University by a team of engineers, medical researchers, and computer scientists. Read on to learn more about it.

Catching Tiny Flaws, Preventing Big Failures: AI-Assisted Ceramic Inspection

At Sandia National Laboratories, a new inspection workflow is taking shape that could help catch tiny defects earlier in the manufacturing process for ceramic components. Read on to learn more.

Enhancing Laser Processing Head Service and Quality Assurance: How Advanced Laser Diagnostics Transform Service Operations and Product Development for High-Power Laser Applications at Precitec US

In the rapidly evolving arena of high-power...

DESI Completes Largest High-resolution 3D Map of universe to Date

On April 14, the 5,000 fiber-optic eyes of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), which scientists and students at UC Santa Cruz are key collaborators on, swiveled...

Groundbreaking Study in Light Control Opens Door to New Technological Frontiers

Scientists at Heriot‑Watt University have demonstrated in a world-first, that light can be used to control every aspect of how electromagnetic waves...

MEMS in Transition

Wide-scale applications for Micro-Electromechanical Systems (MEMS) became practical in the 1980s when they started being fabricated with the same silicon wafer processes as semiconductor chips. Once they could be mass produced, they found a major market in automobile safety systems as inertial sensors for airbag deployment. Then came the introduction of smart phones in the late 2000s. Read on to learn where they're heading.

New on the Market

See what's new on the market, including The Imaging Source's Aptiris, USB 3.1 autofocus cameras designed for dynamic machine vision applications; Würth Elektronik's Proteus-IV and Ophelia-IV components, two new high-performance RF modules based on the latest Nordic nRF54L15-SoC semiconductor; Novotechnik U.S.'s Vert-X 13E Series of touchless rotary sensors; and much more.

Ultrasound Wristband Precisely Tracks Hand Movements in Real Time

MIT engineers have designed an ultrasound wristband that precisely tracks a wearer’s hand movements in real time. Read on to learn more.

Super-Fast Camera Sees Through Dynamic Disorder of Atoms

When materials function inside an operating device, they can behave as if they are dancing. This dynamic disorder is difficult to study because the clusters are not only so small and disordered, but they also fluctuate in time. Researchers report that they have developed a new kind of “camera” that can see the local disorder. Read on to learn more about it.

Using ‘Doughnut’ Beams to See Incredibly Small Objects

In a new study, researchers at CU Boulder have used doughnut-shaped beams of light to take detailed images of objects too tiny to view with traditional microscopes. The new technique could help scientists improve the inner workings of a range of “nanoelectronics,” including the miniature semiconductors in computer chips. Read on to learn more.

A Smart Sensor Performs AI Tricks While Capturing Spectral Images

By folding AI algorithms into a camera’s sensor itself, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have now eliminated a data-processing bottleneck that has long plagued the performance of spectral imaging technology. The result is an intelligent sensor capable of identifying chemicals and characterizing materials quickly and efficiently. Read on to learn more.

Quantum Eyes on Energy Loss: Diamond Quantum Imaging for Next-Gen Power Electronics

Improving energy conversion efficiency in power electronics is vital for a sustainable society. Wide-bandgap semiconductors like GaN and SiC power devices offer advantages due to their high-frequency capabilities. However, energy losses in passive components at high frequencies hinder efficiency and miniaturization. Find out what a research team from the School of Engineering, Institute of Science Tokyo, Japan, developed to help.

A Compact Metalens Telescope Capable of Imaging the Moon

Astronomers and amateurs alike know the bigger the telescope, the more powerful the imaging capability. To keep the power but streamline one of the bulkier components, a Penn State-led research team created the first ultrathin, compact metalens telescope capable of imaging faraway objects, including the Moon. Read on to learn more.

Light-Powered Soft Lens Brings Human-Like Vision to Robotics

A team of biomedical engineers at Georgia Tech has unveiled a breakthrough in adaptive optics: a bio-mimetic, light-powered soft lens that mimics the human eye’s ability to refocus and adjust to varying light conditions. Read on to learn more.

What Can Dogs Tell Us About How Robots Can Locate Objects?

Whether in the kitchen or on a workshop floor, robot assistants that can fetch items for people could be extremely useful. Now, a team of Brown University researchers has developed...

Stanford Researchers Develop Flexible Color-Changing Material

Stanford researchers have developed a flexible material that can quickly change its surface texture and colors, offering potential applications in camouflage, art, robotics, and...

A New Tool for Measuring Femtosecond Lasers

Ultrashort laser pulses — that are shorter than a millionth of a millionth of a second — have transformed fundamental science, engineering and medicine. Despite this, their ultrashort duration...

NVIDIA Includes Ethernet Photonics in New Six-Chip AI Rubin Platform

NVIDIA is bringing Ethernet networking with co-packaged optics to artificial intelligence (AI) factories, enabling scale-out and scale-across on the NVIDIA Rubin platform...

Countering the New Threat from the Sky: Advanced IR Imaging Zoom Lenses for C-UAS Systems

This article highlights requirements for an IR imaging C-UAS platform and examines the design of one state-of-the-art lens system for this application. Read on to learn more.

A Guide to Cost-Effective Thermal Lens Integration: What to Know for Defense and Autonomous Vehicle Applications

From autonomous vehicles navigating in darkness to UAVs detecting threats, thermal imaging steps in when visible cameras fail — and lens design determines performance, cost, and reliability. Read on to learn more.

Co-Developing Illumination and Imaging Systems for Medical Fluorescence Endoscopy

Endoscopic imaging system development requires coordination between various engineering disciplines, especially for optical illumination and imaging engines, particularly when adding fluorescence imaging capabilities. Read on to learn more about it.

Manufacturing the World's Tiniest Light-Emitting Diodes

Miniaturization ranks as the driving force behind the semiconductor industry. The tremendous gains in computer performance since the 1950s are largely due to the fact that ever smaller...

3D LiDAR for Improved Rover Traversal and Imagery

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center has developed a Space Qualified Rover LiDAR (SQRLi) system that will improve rover sensing capabilities in a small, lightweight package. The new SQRLi package is developed to survive the hazardous space environment and provide valuable image data during planetary and lunar rover exploration. Read on to learn more about it.

Color Filtering Software Enhances Material Strain Analysis

Innovators at NASA Johnson Space Center have developed a technology that can isolate a single direction of tensile strain in biaxially woven material. This is accomplished using traditional digital image correlation (DIC) techniques in combination with custom red-green-blue (RGB) color filtering software. Read on to learn more.