Engineering News

Over 100 years ago, Nikola Telsa planned for a system that would offer wireless electricity, but many researchers have struggled with the losses from transferring power over long distances. A group of MIT researchers are working to make Telsa’s vision of a system that offers wireless electricity a reality.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign engineers are using Shrinky Dinks, a plastic that shrinks when heated, to pack nanowires tightly together for use in high-performance electronics. Researchers have had difficulty combining a large number of nanowires together that line up in the same direction and are only one layer thick.

A team of MIT researchers created a phase-changing material built from wax and foam that could be used to build deformable surgical robots. These robots could switch between hard and soft states without damaging organs or vessels as it travels through the body.