Category Physics

Electrical engineers at the University of Delaware developed their version of smart glass technology. It starts opaque but turns transparent when filled with index-matching fluid, as shown in the bottom portion of this pane. Credit: University of Delaware

Engineers develop eco-friendly panels that switch from transparent to opaque. New ‘smart glass’ technology could make curtains and blinds obsolete and provide an instant toggle between light and dark for windshields and roof panes. While this isn’t the first ‘smart glass’ ever developed, it is about one-tenth the price of other versions and more transparent in its transparent state and more reflective in its reflective state than competitors...

Georgia Tech professor Zhong Lin Wang poses with an array of 1,000 LED lights that can be illuminated by power produced by the force of a shoe striking a triboelectric generator placed on the floor. Credit: Rob Felt

Researchers have discovered more details about the way certain materials hold a static charge even after two surfaces separate, information that could help improve devices that leverage such energy as a power source. While the effects of static electricity have been fascinating casual observers and scientists for millennia, certain aspects of how the electricity is generated and stored on surfaces have remained a mystery.

Now, researchers have discovered more details about the way certain materials hold a charge even after two surfaces separate, information that could help impr...

Illustration of the non-line-of-sight imaging system. Credit: Stanford Computational Imaging Lab

Someday your self-driving car could react to hazards before you even see them, thanks to a laser-based imaging technology that can peek around corners. It sounds like magic but the idea of non-line-of-sight imaging is actually feasible,” said Gordon Wetzstein, assistant professor of electrical engineering and senior author of the paper describing this work, published March 5 in Nature.

The Stanford group isn’t alone in developing methods for bouncing lasers around corners to capture images of objects. Where this research advances the field is in the extremely efficient and effective algorithm the researchers developed to process the final image...

Novel 3D Printing method embeds sensing capabilities within Robotic Actuators

Soft robots that can sense touch, pressure, movement and temperature. Inspired by our bodies’ sensory capabilities, researchers have developed a platform for creating soft robots with embedded sensors that can sense movement, pressure, touch, and even temperature. Researchers at Harvard University have built soft robots inspired by nature that can crawl, swim, grasp delicate objects and even assist a beating heart, but none of these devices has been able to sense and respond to the world around them.

Inspired by our bodies’ sensory capabilities, researchers at the Harvard John A...