What if you could run your air conditioner not on conventional electricity, but on the sun’s heat during a warm summer’s day? With advancements in thermoelectric technology, this sustainable solution might one day become a reality. Thermoelectric devices are made from materials that can convert a temperature difference into electricity, without requiring any moving parts […]
Engineers 3-D Print A “Living Tattoo”
MIT engineers have devised a 3-D printing technique that uses a new kind of ink made from genetically programmed living cells. The cells are engineered to light up in response to a variety of stimuli. When mixed with a slurry of hydrogel and nutrients, the cells can be printed, layer by layer, to form three-dimensional, […]
No More Blackouts?
Today, more than 1.3 billion people are living without regular access to power, including more than 300 million in India and 600 million in sub-Saharan Africa. In these and other developing countries, access to a main power grid, particularly in rural regions, is remote and often unreliable. Increasingly, many rural and some urban communities are […]
New Robot Rolls With The Rules Of Pedestrian Conduct
Just as drivers observe the rules of the road, most pedestrians follow certain social codes when navigating a hallway or a crowded thoroughfare: Keep to the right, pass on the left, maintain a respectable berth, and be ready to weave or change course to avoid oncoming obstacles while keeping up a steady walking pace. Now […]
Miniaturizing The Brain Of A Drone
In recent years, engineers have worked to shrink drone technology, building flying prototypes that are the size of a bumblebee and loaded with even tinier sensors and cameras. Thus far, they have managed to miniaturize almost every part of a drone, except for the brains of the entire operation — the computer chip. Standard computer […]
New Scaling Law Predicts How Wheels Drive Over Sand
When engineers design a new aircraft, they carry out much of the initial testing not on full-sized jets but on model planes that have been scaled down to fit inside a wind tunnel. In this more manageable setting, they can study the flow of air around an aircraft under all manner of experimental conditions. Scientists […]
Faster, More Nimble Drones On The Horizon
There’s a limit to how fast autonomous vehicles can fly while safely avoiding obstacles. That’s because the cameras used on today’s drones can only process images so fast, frame by individual frame. Beyond roughly 30 miles per hour, a drone is likely to crash simply because its cameras can’t keep up. Recently, researchers in Zurich […]
Living Sensors at Your Fingertips
Engineers and biologists at MIT have teamed up to design a new “living material” — a tough, stretchy, biocompatible sheet of hydrogel injected with live cells that are genetically programmed to light up in the presence of certain chemicals. In a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers […]
Driverless Platoons
As driverless cars merge into our transportation system in the coming years, some researchers believe autonomous vehicles may save fuel by trailing each other in large platoons. Like birds and fighter jets flying in formation, or bikers and race car drivers drafting in packs, vehicles experience less aerodynamic drag when they drive close together. But […]
3-D-Printed Structures Shrink When Heated
Almost all solid materials, from rubber and glass to granite and steel, inevitably expand when heated. Only in very rare instances do certain materials buck this thermodynamic trend and shrink with heat. For instance, cold water will contract when heated between 0 and 4 degrees Celsius, before expanding. Engineers from MIT, the University of Southern […]