Hardware

A team of UBC Okanagan researchers is investigating a new method to monitor underground gas pipelines with high-tech sensors that can make it easier to find weaknesses, discrepancies and even a diversion in residential natural gas lines.... Read more

Underwater imaging sonars are an essential technology for ocean exploration. Biomimetic sonars that are inspired from marine mammals such as dolphins are an emerging development in this field. A team of scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) Tropical Marine Science Institute (TMSI) has developed a dolphin-inspired compact sonar... Read more

NEC Corporation has developed a power amplifier that will serve as a key device for mobile access and fronthaul/backhaul wireless communication equipment to enable high-speed, high-capacity communications for 5G Advanced and 6G networks. This power amplifier uses GaAs technology that can be mass-produced and has achieved the world's highest output... Read more

What if you could feel raindrops or a beating heart, or train in competitive archery, all from the comfort of your home? That game-changing immersiveness could bring a new dimension to virtual environments, allowing users to experience the world of imagination with a high degree of realism.... Read more

A new technological development by Tel Aviv University has made it possible for a robot to smell using a biological sensor. The sensor sends electrical signals as a response to the presence of a nearby odor, which the robot can detect and interpret.... Read more

Researchers at Bournemouth University have developed and patented a new corrosion sensor that could improve safety and reliability of large structures such as bridges, aircraft, military vehicles and gas pipelines.... Read more

A Tokyo University of Science research team has developed an AI device with high information processing performance. This was achieved by recreating the so-called "edge-of-chaos" state occurring in the brain using ion–electron-coupled dynamics at the solid electrolyte/diamond interface. This technology may be used to develop energy-efficient edge AI devices with... Read more

While artificial intelligence (AI) models are becoming increasingly advanced, training and running these models on conventional computer hardware is very energy consuming. Engineers worldwide have thus been trying to create alternative, brain-inspired hardware that could better support the high computational load of AI systems.... Read more

Have you ever been advised to "walk a mile in someone else's shoes?" Considering another person's perspective can be a challenging endeavor—but recognizing our errors and biases is key to building understanding across communities. By challenging our preconceptions, we confront prejudice, such as racism and xenophobia, and potentially develop a... Read more

You might presume that pump manufacturing is a boring business: an industrial vocation devoid of danger, passion and international intrigue. You would be wrong.... Read more

Enhancing the virtual experience with the touch sensation has become a hot topic, but today's haptic devices remain typically bulky and tangled with wires. A team led by the City University of Hong Kong (CityU) researchers recently developed an advanced wireless haptic interface system, called WeTac, worn on the hand,... Read more

Since the concepts of digital coding metasurfaces and programmable metasurfaces were put forward in 2014, the physical world of electromagnetics has been closely connected to the digital world of information, thus producing the unique advantages of metasurface-based wireless communications.... Read more

Thermal imaging cameras provide important information about differences in temperature in the vicinity. Depending on the application, they can, for example, visualize the body temperature of patients and visitors in hospitals from a distance or reveal problems with the thermal insulation of houses.... Read more

Scientists at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory are leading a new project to ensure that the fastest supercomputers can keep up with big data from high energy physics research.... Read more

You might take photos and selfies with your phone's camera, or scan a QR code. But there is much more you can do with it. Astronomer Olivier Burggraaff developed a phone attachment that allows you to take measurements of surface water with your smartphone.... Read more

Research led by Monash University, RMIT and the University of Adelaide has developed an accurate method of controlling optical circuits on fingernail-sized photonic integrated circuits.... Read more

A successful collaboration between Umeå University and Ericsson Research in Lund has now resulted in an online portal that makes it possible to peek inside the processes in a data center, in real-time.... Read more

Novel materials could revolutionize computer technology. Research conducted by scientists at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI using the Swiss Light Source SLS has reached an important milestone along this path.... Read more

A large percentage of energy used today is consumed in the form of electrical power for processing and storing data and for running the relevant terminal equipment and devices. According to predictions, the level of energy used for these purposes will increase even further in the future. Innovative concepts, such... Read more

Transistors or "microchips" partially explain why our paper-thin laptops can perform much more complicated tasks than their clumsy, gigantic predecessors. To maximize computing capabilities, engineers are trying to make transistors into the smallest size possible, and pack billions of them into a single computer chip.... Read more

An inexpensive piece of hardware integrated with solar panel controllers can protect isolated power networks from cyberattacks.... Read more

A multi-institution research team has developed an optical chip that can train machine learning hardware. Their research is published today in Optica.... Read more

Engineers at Caltech and the University of Southampton in England have collaboratively designed an electronics chip integrated with a photonics chip (which uses light to transfer data)—creating a cohesive final product capable of transmitting information at ultrahigh speed while generating minimal heat.... Read more

As more and more data are being shared and stored digitally, the number of data breaches taking place around the world is on the rise. Scientists are exploring new ways to secure and protect data from increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks.... Read more

A major vulnerability in a networking technology widely used in critical infrastructures such as spacecraft, aircraft, energy generation systems and industrial control systems was exposed by researchers at the University of Michigan and NASA.... Read more

A collaboration between University of Toronto Engineering, Northwestern University and the University of Toledo has resulted in an all-perovskite tandem solar cell with extremely high efficiency and record-setting voltage.... Read more

Next-generation electronic devices could feature enhanced security systems built directly into their circuitry to help fend off malicious attacks. Protective "logic locks"—based on an advanced branch of electronics called spintronics—could be incorporated into the integrated circuits of electronic chips to defend chip security, KAUST researchers have shown. Their study is... Read more

A team of researchers at Johannes Kepler University has found that the skin of a certain kind of mushroom can be used as a biodegradable base for computer chips. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes how well it worked and how easily it could... Read more

Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has developed a proof-of-concept system to autonomously detect compressed air leaks on trains and relay the location of the leaks to mechanical personnel for repair. The automated system could reduce the time, costs and labor needed to find and repair air leaks, and it could lower... Read more

Neuromorphic computing is an information processing model that simulates the efficiency of the human brain with multifunctionality and flexibility. Currently, artificial synaptic devices represented by memristors have been extensively used in neural morphological computing, and different types of neural networks have been developed.... Read more

With Moore's law coming to an end, storage systems are turning to hardware accelerators such as FPGAs to offload computing-intensive tasks from the CPU. However, provisioning these accelerators comes with a hefty price tag.... Read more

In a recent Premier League game, Manchester United went 2-0 up when striker Marcus Rashford ran on to a pass and slotted the ball past Liverpool's goalkeeper, Alisson Becker. The game was then held up briefly while the "video referee" checked whether Rashford was ahead of the last defender, Joe... Read more

As any driver knows, accidents can happen in the blink of an eye—so when it comes to the camera system in autonomous vehicles, processing time is critical. The time that it takes for the system to snap an image and deliver the data to the microprocessor for image processing could... Read more

The fastest way to track a fish is to use the cloud, figuratively speaking. A new acoustic receiver, developed by researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and published in the IEEE Internet of Things Journal, sends near-real-time fish tracking data to the digital cloud, providing timely information to dam... Read more

An international team of researchers has designed and built a chip that runs computations directly in memory and can run a wide variety of AI applications–all at a fraction of the energy consumed by computing platforms for general-purpose AI computing.... Read more

As climate change leads to larger and more frequent wildfires, researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory are using sensors, drones and machine learning to both prevent fires and reduce their damage to the electric grid. Engineers are honing technology to remotely sense electrical arcing and faulty... Read more

Computers that think more like human brains are inching closer to mainstream adoption. But many unanswered questions remain. Among the most pressing, what types of materials can serve as the best building blocks to unlock the potential of this new style of computing.... Read more

"Pamela" is an uncrewed surface vehicle (USV) developed as an entrepreneurial idea at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) for sampling a variety of surface water particles, from microplastic to plankton to salmon lice. The USV is a joint effort by an interdisciplinary team—Andrea Faltynkova, a Ph.D. candidate... Read more

As scientists push the boundaries of machine learning, the amount of time, energy, and money required to train increasingly complex neural network models is skyrocketing. A new area of artificial intelligence called analog deep learning promises faster computation with a fraction of the energy usage.... Read more

Cornell researchers have developed a wearable earphone device—or "earable"—that bounces sound off the cheeks and transforms the echoes into an avatar of a person's entire moving face, utilizing acoustic technology to offer better privacy.... Read more

Human brains process loads of information. When wine aficionados taste a new wine, neural networks in their brains process an array of data from each sip. Synapses in their neurons fire, weighing the importance of each bit of data—acidity, fruitiness, bitterness—before passing it along to the next layer of neurons... Read more

Wearable displacement sensors—which are attached to a human body, detect movements in real time and convert them into electrical signals—are currently being actively studied. However, research on tensile-capable displacement sensors has many limitations, such as low tensile properties and complex manufacturing processes.... Read more

Can a $1 device that attaches to a mobile phone become a pivotal tool to help solve the $1 trillion #foodwaste problem?... Read more

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University have created a simple prototype device that enables users to control "smart home" technology by changing their breathing patterns.... Read more

Moore's Law needs a hug. The days of stuffing transistors on little silicon computer chips are numbered, and their life rafts—hardware accelerators—come with a price.... Read more

Highway drivers passing through construction zones may not give second or even first thought to the barriers that separate their vehicles from the workers on the other side of them. But those barriers—usually precast, portable segments of concrete—are often the only buffers protecting the construction workers from the tons of... Read more

Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers demonstrated that an electrochemical sensor paired with a transmitter not only detects propane leaks within seconds, but it can also send a signal to alert emergency services.... Read more

"Hey, Siri, how's the weather today?" Voice recognition technology is increasingly prevalent. It is a convenient technology with broad applications. However, to get the most of its intended functions, users must stand near the device and articulate carefully. What if the skin on our bodies could recognize voices without the... Read more

Researchers from INNOVENT e.V. and Ferdinand-Braun-Institut gGmbH have developed a measurement technique to detect nanoscale fluorescent thin films for the first time without using expensive laboratory equipment. Fluorescent thin films are used in areas such as security, logistics and merchandise management.... Read more

As applications of artificial intelligence spread, more computation has to occur—and more efficiently with lower energy consumption—on local devices instead of in geographically distant data centers in order to overcome frustrating delays in response. A group of University of Tokyo engineers have for the first time tested the use of... Read more