Sensors

My Opinion: Quantum Computing Is Coming But Has This Engineer Puzzled

My Opinion: Quantum computing is coming but has this engineer puzzled. As we celebrate 2025, the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology, I find that thinking about these things from an engineer’s point of view is quite challenging.

Brain-Like Computer Steers Rolling Robot With 0.25 Percent of the Power Needed by Conventional Controllers

Analog computing is making a comeback with hardware that processes and stores information in the same location, similar to biological...

Careful Heating Unlocks Unprecedented Sensitivity to Pressure in Semiconductor Materials

Stronger cell phone signals, more accurate sensors, and cleaner energy may be achieved by adding a simple step to the industrial fabrication process of...

Your Skin Is Breathing — This New Wearable Device Can Measure It.

Northwestern University researchers have developed the first wearable device for measuring gases emitted from and absorbed by the skin. By analyzing these gases, the device...

World's First Petahertz-Speed Phototransistor in Ambient Conditions

What if ultrafast pulses of light could operate computers at speeds a million times faster than today's best processors? A team of scientists, including researchers from...

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.

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.

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.

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.

Advanced Microelectronics: Why A Next-Gen Semiconductor Doesn’t Fall to Pieces

The mechanism holding new ferroelectric semiconductors together produces a conductive pathway that could enable high power transistors. A new class of...

How the CARL-Bot Catches Some Tasty Waves

Researchers were brainstorming ways that underwater vehicles could use turbulent water currents for propulsion and wondered if, instead of them being a problem, they could be an advantage.

My Opinion: Sensors Made to Order

My Opinion: The Institute for Connected Sensor-Systems (IConS) at North Carolina State University is exploring new ways to combine sensor development and application-driven solutions.

Product Focus: Zebra Technologies Showcases New Intelligent Automation Solutions

Zebra Technologies Corporation (Lincolnshire, IL) presented its newest solutions to advance intelligent automation across manufacturing and warehouse...

Product Focus: Sonair Unveils 3D Ultrasonic Sensor Designed to Boost Safety

Developed by a Norwegian sensor startup Sonair, a safe 3D ultrasonic sensor — ADAR — designed to boost safety in spaces shared by humans and robots debuted at...

Tech Focus: Translating Business Orders into Actionable Robot Missions

InOrbit.AI (Mountain View, CA) is unveiling the InOrbit Business Execution System™ at Automate 2025. This key addition to InOrbit Space Intelligence™ transforms how...

Tech Focus: Advancing Inline Quality Control with High-Precision 3D Metrology

A new state-of-the-art robot-assisted 3D inspection and metrology system designed for real-time quality control in manufacturing, is being showcased by senswork...

Nanogenerators for Monitoring Heart Health

A team of researchers has developed self-powered, wearable, triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) with polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)-based contact layers for monitoring cardiovascular health. TENGs help conserve mechanical energy and turn it into power. 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.

Smart Sensing, Foundation of the IoT/IIoT, is Maturing at a Rapid Pace

Thanks to Internet of Things technologies, there are many ways to make previously unconnected things talk. Processes, conditions, equipment, or machines have much to say about themselves and help keep the industry applications they’re integrally involved in running smoothly.

New Products

See the new products, including Teledyne FLIR's radiometric models of its high-performance Boson®+ thermal and Hadron™ 640R+ dual thermal-visible camera modules; Insight SIP's ISP2554-HM module — a dynamic IOT node, with support for Bluetooth Low Energy, Thread, and Zigbee radios; Bosch Sensortec's BMV080 particulate matter sensor; dSPACE's MicroLabBox II, a very flexible entry-level system for closed-loop tests at the controller level; and 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.

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.

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.

IoT Threat Protection Is a Shared Ecosystem Responsibility

While the rapid advancement of IIoT applications is exciting, it also come with its challenges, especially from a security perspective. A recent study found that 57 percent of all IoT devices are vulnerable to medium- or high-severity threats and that two in five chief information security officers struggle to gain visibility into — and understand — their IoT deployments. Read on to learn more.

Processing and Packaging MEMS to Maximize Functionality

The MEMS industry can’t match the rapid innovation cycles typical of the semiconductor industry — it’s been more than a decade since we’ve seen a major leap in MEMS manufacturing processes. However, Omnitron is confident that they can rapidly improve the approach to manufacturing MEMS. Read on to learn more.