DARPA wants robots that are able to eventually do many things humans can A headless humanoid robot clambers noisily through an obstacle course with the grim, unfeeling purpose of a terminato... Read more
Diesel-electric submarines are a growing worry for the maritime nations of the world. Submarine combat may seem like an obsolete relic from World War II films and Cold War thrillers, but the... Read more
“At this price point, the Sandia Hand has the potential to be a disruptive technology,” Sandia National Laboratories has developed a cost-effective robotic hand that can be used in disarming... Read more
Harvard’s Wyss Institute receives $2.6M from DARPA to develop suit The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University today announced that it has received a $2.6... Read more
Small satellites capable of providing on-demand battlefield images Enemy fighters use commercial satellite images to plot attacks on U.S. troops, but most U.S. soldiers can’t get the s... Read more
‘Innovation economics‘ is propelling a global hunt for inventions that can extend the frontiers of renewable generation. First comes invention then comes prosperity. That’s... Read more
Unprecedented mechanical behavior for a metal A team of researchers from UC Irvine, HRL Laboratories and the California Institute of Technology have developed the world’s lighte... Read more
The rubbery surface allows the applied mechanical stress of footsteps to produce piezoelectricity It could be the last word in concrete solutions to carbon emissions: a paving slab th... Read more
DARPA robots that may someday be our new overlords One part of the Department of Defense is hard at work researching technology that is alternately amazing, bizarre, and downright scary. You... Read more
What’s new, and old, about the latest in computing Today IBM unveiled a new ‘cognitive computing’ microchip that, according to the company, emulates some of the brain... Read more
ARPA-e funds potential breakthrough work to make energy-dense batteries that enable long distance travel Lithium spontaneously combusts in air, yet the battery in your computer—and any of th... Read more
A mid-life crisis threatens its future Read more
Image via Wikipedia As development of micro- and nano-scale devices continues to advance, so does the need for an equally-tiny method of powering them. There’s not much point in developing a... Read more
Image via Wikipedia Give a computer a task that can be crisply defined — win at chess, predict the weather — and the machine bests humans nearly every time. Yet when problems are nuanced or... Read more
Image via Wikipedia Most research on renewable energy has focused on replacing the electricity that now comes from burning coal and natural gas. But the spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the reli... Read more