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Top 10 Most-Read Tech Briefs Stories of 2024

With another year of Tech Briefs almost in the books, it's time to look at our most-read articles of 2024.

Fort Wayne Metals Expands Nitinol Melting Capabilities

Fort Wayne Metals, a developer of precision materials for the medical device industry, has expanded its nitinol melting capabilities. The company doubled its melted Nitinol output from...

My Opinion: Industrial Symbiosis Is Good for the Environment and for the Pocketbook

Efficiency can be multiplied when companies use innovative methods to cooperate with each other.

Making a Self-Driving Go-Kart

Penn Engineering students wanted to make a self-driving go-kart that can go as fast as possible, and even as fast as a human driver. Watch this video to hear them discuss their work with autonomous vehicle...

Designing a Better — and Safer — Future for Transportation

What can a 20-by-20-foot “smart” scaled city and a fleet of small, motorized cars, drones, cameras, and virtual reality technology tell us about the future of transportation? A...

Meet MobiPrint: A Mobile 3D Printer that Can Automatically Measure a Room and Print to the Specs

University of Washington researchers have created MobiPrint, a mobile 3D printer that can automatically measure a room and print objects onto its floor. The team’s graphic interface lets users design objects for a space that the robot has mapped out.

Microrobots Swimming Autonomously in Viscous Liquids

The researchers’ groundbreaking study introduces the first toroidal, light-driven microrobot that can move autonomously in viscous liquids, such as mucus.

Testing Swimming Robots for Icy-Moon Ocean Exploration

In a competition swimming pool, engineers tested prototypes for a futuristic mission concept: a swarm of underwater robots that could look for signs of life on ocean worlds. Watch this...

Meet RoBoa: A Life-Saving, Snake-Like Robot

An ETH Zurich team of engineers has developed RoBoa, a snake-like robot with the ability to grow in length and slither into the most inaccessible places.

Imaging

What medical device, invented in 1895 and often used in holiday-related injuries like falling from ladders while decorating for the holidays, was first publicly demonstrated just days before Christmas?

Navigating the Transition: Understanding RSS-102 Issue 6 Updates and Implications

Radio equipment marketed or sold into Canada must be certified with ISED Canada, the Canadian equipment authorization regulator. Radio transmitter equipment must be certified to the latest issue of Radio Standards Specifications (RSS). How well do you understand RSS-102 Issue 6 updates and its implications? Take this quiz to find out.

Helping Robots Make Good Decisions in Real Time

In 2018, Google DeepMind's AlphaZero program taught itself the games of chess, shogi, and go, using machine learning and a special algorithm to determine the best moves to win a game within a...

Magnetically Controlled Kirigami Surfaces Move Objects: No Grasping Needed

A novel device couples magnetic fields and kirigami design principles to remotely control the movement of a flexible dimpled surface, allowing it to manipulate...

Bird-Inspired Drone Can Jump for Take-Off

EPFL researchers have built a drone that can walk, hop, and jump into flight with the aid of birdlike legs, greatly expanding the range of potential environments accessible to unmanned aerial...

A Haptic Patch Can Transmit Complex Information to a Wearer’s Skin

Matthew Flavin, Ph.D., was part of a team at Northwestern University that developed a haptic patch to convey visual information to unsighted people through an array of multi-function actuators. Now, as assistant professor in the School of Electrical Engineering, he has started a new lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology to continue his work on bioelectronics.

MIT Team Takes a Major Step Toward Fully 3D-Printed Active Electronics

Active electronics — components that can control electrical signals — usually contain semiconductor devices that receive, store, and process information. These...

Researchers Demonstrate Self-Assembling Electronics

Researchers have demonstrated a new technique for self-assembling electronic devices. The proof-of-concept work was used to create diodes and transistors and paves the way for...

How the Navy Uses Off-Gassing to Detoxify Submerged Equipment

A video explaining how the U.S. Navy detoxifies non-metallic materials used in equipment and devices that are operated underwater.

Drug-Delivery System Reduces Chemo Side Effects

To prevent hearing damage during cancer treatment, researchers have developed a novel drug-delivery system that transports medications to the inner ear. The researchers wanted to create a...

Bioinspired Capsule Pump Drugs into Walls of GI Tract

Researchers have developed an ingestible capsule that releases a burst of drugs directly into the wall of the stomach or other organs of the digestive tract. This capsule could offer an...

Robots to Provide Autonomous Soil Sensing

In environmental engineering, there's huge value to infield real-time sample analysis. Watch this video to learn about how a team at Carnegie Mellon University is building robots to provide this...

How Sensor-Laden Buoys Lead to a Better Understanding of Arctic Sea Ice Melting

How does a team from the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center deploy specially modified, sensor-laden buoys into the Arctic Ocean to better...

Tactile Sensors for Manufacturing: How Robots 'Feel'

Watch this video to see Howie Choset, Lu Li, and Victoria Webster-Wood — from the Manufacturing Futures Institute — explain their work. It creates specialized sensors that allow robots...

Efficient, Sustainable Atmospheric Water Harvesting

Imagine being severely dehydrated and water literally appearing out of thin air. In other words: The air you breathe could quickly become the water that wets your whistle. Well, that...

DoD Signs New Strategy for Countering Unmanned Systems

The Department of Defense announced that Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has signed a new, classified strategy for countering the effects of unmanned systems, also called...

How Off-Gassing Keeps Divers, Submariners Safe From Toxin-Releasing Materials

Everyone knows that new car smell — the chemical odor wafting off the new plastics, fabrics and other materials in a vehicle's interior. Those smells are caused...

Using Squeezed Light to Develop Sensors That Defy Defense Limits

Raytheon’s BBN Technologies is developing next-generation, compact, low-power, deployable photonic sensors that will provide users with better awareness of environmental...

Atomic Fountain to Host Defense Research for Quantum Sensing

Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) physicists are on track to bring the institution’s new atomic fountain online – the largest of its kind in the world – for applications to...