Category Technology/Electronics

Imagine your car starting the moment you get in because it recognizes the jacket you’re wearing. Consider the value of a hospital gown that continuously measures and transmits a patient’s vital signs. These are just two applications made possible by a new “body area network”-enabling fabric invented by engineers at the University of California, Irvine.

In a paper published recently in Nature Electronics, researchers in UCI’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering detail how they integrated advanced metamaterials into flexible textiles to create a system capable of battery-free communication between articles of clothing and nearby de...

By merging two or more sources of light, interferometers create interference patterns that can provide remarkably detailed information about everything they illuminate, from a tiny flaw on a mirror, to the dispersion of pollutants in the atmosphere, to gravitational patterns in far reaches of the Universe.

“If you want to measure something w...

A team of researchers led by an Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) facu11lty member performed the first-ever simulation of baryons — fundamental quantum particles — on a quantum computer.

With their results, the team has taken a step towards more complex quantum simulations that will allow scientists to study neutron stars, learn more about the earliest moments of the universe, and realize the revolutionary potential of quantum computers.

“This is an important step forward — it is the first simulation of baryons on a quantum computer ever,” Christine Muschik, an IQC faculty member, said. “Instead of smashing particles in an accelerator, a quantum computer may one day allow us to simulate these interactions that we use to study the origins of the universe and so much more.”

Engineering students have designed an autonomous robot that can find and open doors in 3D digital simulations. Now they’re building the hardware for an autonomous robot that not only can open its own doors but also can find the nearest electric wall outlet to recharge without human help.

One flaw in the notion that robots will take over the world is that the world is full of doors.

And doors are kryptonite to robots, said Ou Ma, an aerospace engineering professor at the University of Cincinnati.

“Robots can do many things, but if you want one to open a door by itself and go through ...