The future of drones isn’t in the skies. It’s in the ocean. That’s what the OpenROV team proved in 2012 with their wildly successful remote-controlled ocean-going drone (complete with underwater camera). And now they’re back with the Trident, a sleeker, faster model–which I took for a test swim last week at San Francisco’s Aquarium of the Bay . Read more…
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New, Ultrafast Swimming Drones Are Tiny Ocean Explorers
London Underground has been experimenting with a new system which recovers energy lost by braking trains, and it could save the subway system an impressive 5 percent on its energy bills. Read more…
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London Underground Is Trialling Regenerative Braking to Help Power Trains
Electrons are quick, but they’re not quick enough — in fact they’re holding back the speed of modern computing. Now, a team has developed the world’s first ever light-based memory chip that can store data permanently, and it could help usher in a new era of computing Read more…
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A New Light-Based Memory Chip Could Change the Fundamentals of Computing
Mass dampers are designed to counteract the swaying of a skyscraper as it’s buffeted by strong winds or earthquakes. But it’s incredibly rare to see one of these huge devices moving more an a few inches. Unless, of course, there’s a typhoon nearby. Read more…
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Watch the Incredible Force of a Typhoon Move a Skyscraper’s 720-Ton Mass Damper
The prospect of a material that can change color yet is still flexible enough to wear as clothing is a perennial sci-fi dream—and now amazingly close to reality. This new electronic skin is just a few microns thick and yet manages to change color, acting as a credible digital display. Read more…
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This Full-Color Display is Just Microns Thick and Flexible Like Skin
Inspiration lies in the strangest of places—and for researchers at the Agency for Science, Technology & Research in Singapore, that includes the eye of moth. A new antireflective coating inspired by the creature’s ocular faculties could help bump up the efficiency of solar cells. Read more…
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How a Moth’s Eye Could Help Improve the Efficiency of Solar Cells
Concrete is an amazing building material: cheap to create, strong when used correctly, and hard-wearing, too. But turning it into exotic and shapely forms can be prohibitively complex and expensive. Now, a 3D printer capable of producing one-off moulds as large as a phone booth could help turn architectural dreamw into affordable reality. Read more…
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A Room-Sized 3D Printer Will Make Freeform Concrete Design Easy
The most inefficient part of a gearing system is also its most vital: the teeth. While they allow the systems to, y’know, work, they also introduce vast quantities of frictional losses and, in turn, mechanical wear—so this new system uses magnetic levitation to do away with them. Read more…
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This Maglev Gearbox Doesn’t Need Teeth
When it’s hot out, buildings have a hard time staying cool: bombarded with ambient heat and generating yet more inside, their air conditioning systems have to work hard to keep temperatures down. Now, a new super-thin coating developed at Stanford could be applied to buildings to help them cool themselves more effectively. Read more…
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A New Super-Thin Coating Could Cool Buildings Without AC
Virtually all of your gadgets tote lithium ion batteries—but while they’re the best you can hope for at the moment, new engineering means that pure lithium batteries are now a possibility , and they could double the life of your phone. Read more…
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A New Pure Lithium Battery Could Double Your Phone’s Life