Future Innovations

A new approach that uses light to switch the magnetic states of a material could lead to faster, smaller and more energy-efficient data storage. Engineers at the University of California San Diego published their findings […]

Scientists have developed an air purifier charged by sunlight and indoor LED lights, potentially offering an inexpensive, lower-maintenance alternative to standard filtration systems that protect users from pollutants and airborne diseases. The study, published in […]

Using the human body to transmit signals, Georgia Tech engineers have created a wireless networking system that allows tiny implantable sensors and actuators to communicate with each other and with wearable devices. Their system means […]

Mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Anupam Pandey’s research team has found that microscopic folds in soft materials can act like tiny, programmable traffic gates for liquid droplets. The folds can stop droplets, let them pass […]

How many times have you asked someone to hold open a door while carrying something, or fumbled with your front-door keys with your arms full of groceries? Wouldn’t it be great if you could give […]

A research team at the Faculty of Engineering at The University of Hong Kong (HKU), led by professor Ruibang Luo of the School of Computing and Data Science and professor Can Li of the Department […]

For many of us, the last—and only—time we’ve seen a walking hand was Thing in “The Addams Family” movies or TV series. Now there’s another. Engineers from the Soft Robotics Lab at ETH Zurich have […]

Screens are becoming smaller and sharper. This can be seen, for example, in augmented reality glasses and the electronic viewfinders of cameras, some of which have a screen diagonal of less than 1 centimeter (0.4 […]

For decades, the gold standard for capturing human movement and transferring these data into the digital world has required actors to wear suits with physical markers that cameras track in a specialized studio. While accurate, […]

Commercial cameras can be powerful, producing images with exquisite detail that mimic real life. In the lab, specially designed cameras can photograph objects in the infrared region, invisible to the naked eye.This post was originally […]