Reporte #119
Robocars and Electricity—a Match Made in Heaven
IEEE Spectrum Recent Content
A lot of talk on self-driving cars name-checks electric drive as well, which might lead you to put the pairing of these technologies down to fashion.
Letter regarding US withdrawal from Paris climate agreement
MIT News – Engineering
The following email was sent today to the MIT community by President L. Rafael Reif.
Wirth Research unveil details of unmanned endurance aircraft
The Engineer
An Oxfordshire company is leveraging its motorsports expertise in the development of a Tilt Rotor, Vertical Take Off and Landing (VTOL) advanced terrain mapping drone powered by a hydrogen fuel cell.
MIT to receive $140 million gift
MIT News – Engineering
Unrestricted gift from anonymous alumnus can support any facet of the Institute’s educational and research mission.
Nottingham Trent duo use discarded parts to build power generator
MIT News – Engineering
A product design undergraduate and a professor of intelligent engineering systems have joined forces to create a wave energy harvester from discarded household items.
Nanosheets: IBM’s Path to 5-Nanometer Transistors
IEEE Spectrum Recent Content
Researchers at IBM believe the future of the transistor is in stacked nanosheets. After a decade of research, most recently in partnership with Samsung and Global Foundries, the company will describe 5-nanometer node test chips based on these transistors today at the Symposium on VLSI Technology and Circuits in Kyoto.
Sandcastles inspire new 3D printing method
The Engineer
Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a new technique to 3D print silicon paste, which relies on the same principles that allow sandcastles to hold together.
Faster, cheaper method for printing human skin “could establish a new era”
The Engineer
South Korean researchers unveil single-step process for making synthetic skin.
We Could Build an Artificial Brain Right Now
IEEE Spectrum Recent Content
Brain-inspired computing is having a moment. Artificial neural network algorithms like deep learning, which are very loosely based on the way the human brain operates, now allow digital computers to perform such extraordinary feats as translating language, hunting for subtle patterns in huge amounts of data, and beating the best human players at Go.
A Rocket-Propelled Miniature Robot for Planetary Exploration
IEEE Spectrum Recent Content
In terms of overall bang for your buck, solid-fuel rockets are pretty great: They’re dead simple, very reliable, and offer respectable efficiency in a very small form factor, as long as you’re prepared to handle a lot of thrust all at once and then never again. While some robots have attempted to use rocketsto jump from place to place, controllability has always been an issue, since solid-fuel rockets give you a fixed amount of thrust whether you want it or not, and that thrust isn’t always directed in exactly the way you’d like.