Engineering

Engineers fly first-ever plane with no moving parts

Since the first airplane took flight over 100 years ago, virtually every aircraft in the sky has flown with the help of moving parts such as propellers, turbine blades, and fans, which are powered by the combustion of fossil ...

Engineering

Hey, watch where you're flicking. That's a computer

Michigan Micro Mote (M3) is the world's smallest computer. How small? It's about the size of a grain of rice. A University of Michigan's March report can tell you that the team behind the computer have come up with a fully ...

Robotics

A fairy-like robot flies by the power of wind and light

The development of stimuli-responsive polymers has brought about a wealth of material-related opportunities for next-generation small-scale, wirelessly controlled soft-bodied robots. For some time now, engineers have known ...

Engineering

Controlling neurons with light—but without wires or batteries

University of Arizona biomedical engineering professor Philipp Gutruf is first author on the paper Fully implantable, optoelectronic systems for battery-free, multimodal operation in neuroscience research, published in Nature ...

Electronics & Semiconductors

Tiny switches give solid-state LiDAR record resolution

When Google unveiled its first autonomous cars in 2010, the spinning cylinder mounted on the roofs really stood out. It was the vehicle's light detection and ranging (LiDAR) system, which worked like light-based radar. Together ...

Automotive

BMW puts traffic light recognition to the test

The BMW Group is investing in the future of self-driving vehicles. Getting people to adopt self-driving cars will require lots of attention to how these cars can behave safely not just on highways but in urban settings.

Electronics & Semiconductors

Researchers look to the human eye to boost computer vision efficiency

Conventional silicon architecture has taken computer vision a long way, but Purdue University researchers are developing an alternative path—taking a cue from nature—that they say is the foundation of an artificial retina. ...

page 1 from 5