Category Technology/Electronics

For the first time, the researchers from MIT and AFFOA have produced fibers with embedded electronics that are so flexible they can be woven into soft fabrics and made into wearable clothing.
Credit: Image courtesy of MIT; Courtesy of the researchers

Researchers incorporate optoelectronic diodes into fibers and weave them into washable fabrics. The latest development in textiles and fibers is a kind of soft hardware that you can wear: cloth that has electronic devices built right into it. Researchers at MIT have now embedded high speed optoelectronic semiconductor devices, including light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and diode photodetectors, within fibers that were then woven at Inman Mills, in South Carolina, into soft, washable fabrics and made into communication systems...

Researchers at Binghamton University, State University at New York have created a biodegradable, paper-based battery that is more efficient than previously possible.
Credit: Seokheun ‘Sean’ Choi

Proposed design is easy to produce, low-cost, flexible and more efficient than previously proposed paper-based batteries. The batteries of the future may be made out of paper. Researchers at Binghamton University, State University at New York have created a biodegradable, paper-based battery that is more efficient than previously possible.

For years, there has been excitement in the scientific community about the possibility of paper-based batteries as an eco-friendly alternative...

A smart wristband with a wireless connection to smartphones.
Credit: Abbas Furniturewalla

Engineers invent biosensor technology for wearable devices. Rutgers University-New Brunswick engineers have created a smart wristband with a wireless connection to smartphones that will enable a new wave of personal health and environmental monitoring devices. Their technology, which could be added to watches and other wearable devices that monitor heart rates and physical activity, is detailed in a study published online in Microsystems & Nanoengineering...

A new fabrication process enables the creation of soft robots at the millimeter scale with features on the micrometer scale as shown here with the example of a small soft robotic peacock spider with moving body parts and colored eyes and abdomens.
Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University

Scientists have created – of all things – a soft robotic spider. Don’t worry, it doesn’t bite: the spider is a demonstration of a new manufacturing process that can produce soft robots on the millimeter scale with micrometer-scale features for microsurgery and other procedures.

Roboticists are envisioning a future in which soft, animal-inspired robots could be safely deployed in difficult-to-access natural and human-made environments, such as in delicate surgical procedures in the human body, or in spac...