Energy-Efficient Design Helps Autonomous Vehicles Take Off


A new flight endurance record was set recently by the Predator B/MQ-9 Reaper Big Wing experimental drone, traveling 37 hours non-stop, and setting the bar for the next stage of autonomous flight development. The growth of drone technology and their autonomous capabilities for surveillance, security, and reconnaissance has grown rapidly over the past several years, thanks to ever-increasing perf... » read more

System Bits: Dec. 23


Building MEMS at one-hundredth the cost The microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) market was $12 billion business in 2014, dominated by a handful of devices, such as accelerometers that reorient the screens of most smartphones. However, researchers at MIT pointed out that potentially useful MEMS have languished in development because they don’t have markets large enough to justify the initia... » read more

Smarter Cars, But How Smart?


With the emergence of the Internet of Things, smart cars are beginning to garner more attention — the kind that comes with real R&D dollars, market development plans and cost analyses for future commercialization. Smart cars are different than connected cars, which are simply smartphones on wheels. Until now, the focus on intelligence in automobiles has largely been on driver assist and in... » read more