Tech Xplore news
Tech Xplore / Light-powered soft robots that can keep jumping forever
Researchers from North Carolina State University have created teardrop-shaped soft robots that leap upward or forward when exposed to infrared light—and will keep jumping as long as the light is present. The work demonstrates ...
Tech Xplore / A humanoid robot's social expressiveness may backfire when it makes mistakes
For robots to be successfully deployed in real-world environments, humans should trust them enough to cooperate with them. Some roboticists have been trying to determine whether users perceive robots that exhibit socially ...
Tech Xplore / New transistor brings high voltage to microchip scale
Inside every electronic device, the flow of electricity is controlled by a switch called a transistor. For decades, these switches were made from silicon. More recently, engineers have turned to a material called gallium ...
Tech Xplore / Magnetic memory could make edge AI faster while reducing energy use
Texas engineers teamed up with the world's largest semiconductor foundry to fabricate and test an emerging memory technology that could help meet the increasing energy demand of artificial intelligence.
Tech Xplore / Two ultrathin films turn low-grade heat into cooling without an electric motor
Refrigerators, air-conditioning systems and data centers consume enormous amounts of electricity, and cooling demand is constantly rising. A research team from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the University ...
Tech Xplore / Brain-reading earbuds are already here, prompting urgent questions about children and neurodata
While it may sound like science fiction, earbuds that read brain activity are already on sale. Wearable technology company Neurable claims that its headphones, equipped with electroencephalography (EEG) sensors, can track ...
Tech Xplore / Shared-memory AI system lets microscope components coordinate in real time
Arco Bast studies how neurons communicate. Earlier this year, the Janelia postdoc encountered a more mechanical version of the same problem: The components of his custom microscope could not easily communicate with one another.
Tech Xplore / Giving solid-state batteries a squeeze keeps them from short-circuiting
Lithium-ion batteries power transportation and grid storage and enable our digital lives, but these ubiquitous batteries require frequent recharging and can fail over time. To make batteries more reliable and longer-lasting, ...
Tech Xplore / Multiple cameras can better track a person's identity using geometry and appearance
By combining two complementary clues—camera geometry and visual appearance—researchers at the Institute of Science Tokyo, Japan, developed a new approach for preserving identities across multiple cameras. The method uses ...
Tech Xplore / Single-step process could overcome key challenge in recycling of spent EV batteries
As the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) continues to grow, the disposal of spent EV batteries is emerging as a major social and environmental challenge. Wastewater generated during conventional battery recycling processes ...
Tech Xplore / How AI could uncover the hidden ways people work together
Yankai Wang, a Ph.D. student in organizational behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business, was reading a paper about how transformers—the architecture behind large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Claude—might ...
Tech Xplore / From cartwheels to backflips, motion-imitation framework teaches three robots dynamic movements
Legged robots, robotic systems with legs that typically resemble those of animals or humans, could be advantageous for completing tasks in home environments or populated, dynamic spaces. These robots may look like humans ...