Category Technology/Electronics

In an empty parking lot, a car ‘thinks’ it is on a real road.

Researchers at The Ohio State University have developed new software to aid in the development, evaluation and demonstration of safer autonomous, or driverless, vehicles.

Called the Vehicle-in-Virtual-Environment (VVE) method, it allows the testing of driverless cars in a perfectly safe environment, said Bilin Aksun-Guvenc, co-author of the study and a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Ohio State.

Imagine a driverless car is placed in the middle of an empty parking lot...

A new type of ferroelectric polymer that is exceptionally good at converting electrical energy into mechanical strain holds promise as a high-performance motion controller or “actuator” with great potential for applications in medical devices, advanced robotics, and precision positioning systems, according to a team of international researchers led by Penn State.

Mechanical strain, how a material changes shape when force is applied, is an important property for an actuator, which is any material that will change or deform when an external force such as electrical energy is applied...

Toshiba Europe and global telecommunications corporation Orange say they have achieved a significant advance in securing network communications from ever-more powerful computer attacks.

Security experts have been warning that a new generation of quantum computers is likely only a few years away from attaining the ability to crack today’s stringent public key encryption codes.

Some experts say quantum computers will be strong enough to crack the widely adopted RSA-2048 encryption standard for secure online transactions within about 15 years. The Cloud Security Alliance had a more dire—and precise—prediction: Encryption safeguards will be overtaken by April 14, 2030...

The novel device could lead to more versatile quantum processors with clearer outputs...