Engineering news

Robotics

Modular robot design uses tethered jumping for planetary exploration

Recent technological advances have opened new possibilities for the development of robotic systems, including spacecraft for the exploration of other planets. These new systems could ultimately contribute to our understanding ...

Robotics

Engineers develop soft robot that crawls, climbs, and shape-shifts to move in new directions

A new type of soft robot can crawl like a worm, climb cables, and suddenly snap into a completely different shape to move in a new direction—all controlled by a single air input. This breakthrough, developed by researchers ...

Robotics

Robot acrobatics: Mammal tails offer surprising design insights

While exploring how best to design robots that use tails to reorient their bodies in midair, a team of researchers at the University of Michigan and University of California San Diego found that mammals had already figured ...

Robotics

The Kiri-Spoon: Research turns robotic hardware into flatware for assisted eating

More than 2 million adults living in the United States rely on a caregiver's assistance to eat daily meals. In addition to human caregivers, technology has been developed to provide assistance. For example, tabletop and wheelchair-mounted ...

Engineering

268 new alloys: AI speeds up search for aerospace materials

Skoltech and MIPT researchers have sped up the search for high-performance metal alloys for the aerospace industry, mechanical engineering, and electronics. The team's machine learning-driven approach serves as a fast-track ...

Engineering

Specialized sponge can suck up stormwater pollution

As more waterways contend with algae blooms and pollution caused by minerals from agricultural runoff and industrial manufacturing processes, new methods to remove pollutants like phosphate, copper and zinc are emerging across ...

Engineering

Boosting Li-ion battery performance with surface technology

With the rising global demand for cost-effective sustainable batteries, lithium-ion batteries are at the forefront as energy storage solutions. However, achieving a high energy density with long-term stability in such batteries ...

Engineering

Semiconductor material for short-wave infrared sensors developed

The Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science has successfully developed a high-quality compound semiconductor material for ultra-sensitive short-wave infrared (SWIR) sensors. The study is published in the journal ...

Engineering

AI sensor cuts false alarms in smoke detectors

A group of South Korean researchers has developed an intelligent fire detection technology that drastically reduces false alarm incidents which go off in the absence of a real fire (hereinafter "unwanted alarm"), and is on ...

Engineering

Engineers and architects launch manifesto on regenerative design

A team of engineers, architects and researchers from the University of Bath have published a manifesto on "regenerative" design and engineering, providing a guide to confronting the climate crisis and creating "Net Positive" ...

Engineering

Encoding many properties in one material via 3D printing

A class of synthetic soft materials called liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) can change shape in response to heat, similar to how muscles contract and relax in response to signals from the nervous system. 3D printing these ...

Robotics

Engineers help multirobot systems stay in the safety zone

Drone shows are an increasingly popular form of large-scale light display. These shows incorporate hundreds to thousands of airborne bots, each programmed to fly in paths that together form intricate shapes and patterns across ...

Engineering

Simulator characterizes air pollution in aircraft cabins

"Fume events" occur when fluids such as engine oil or hydraulic fluid contaminate the air inside an airplane cabin via the "bleed air" used for air supply and conditioning. Measurements taken in flight do not allow for determination ...

Engineering

Energy-efficient cooling thanks to ionic wind

Thanks to a new type of airflow booster for ionic wind, completely new fields of application are opening up for the start-up Ionic Wind Technologies. In the future, the patented technology will be used primarily for cooling ...