Engineering News

Japanese air bag manufacturer Takata has been hit with a record setting $200 million fine for violating the Motor Vehicle Safety Act. Takata’s exploding air bags have prompted an unprecedented punitive response from NHTSA. “Today, we are holding Takata responsible for its failures, and we are taking strong action to protect the traveling public,” said NHTSA Administrator Mark Rosekind.

New technology for the Internet of Things (IoT) uses the human body as an...

Los Angeles is the first city in the world to deploy new “smart” Philips street lights, which have built in 4G LTE wireless technology from Ericsson. The SmartPoles are actually standard city street lights, but they been upgraded with efficient LED lights and Ericsson’s small cell technology. Since the lights are connected, the city can manage street lighting to make sure that streets are well-lit without wasting energy. But the biggest change is adding the wireless connectivity, which will provide better broadband coverage without adding any new cell towers.

After several months of silence, NASA engineer Paul March has confirmed that NASA’s work on the controversial electromagnetic (EM) drive continues at the Eagleworks Laboratory at the Johnson Space Center. The hypothetical technology could radically change space travel by allowing spacecraft to fly to the edge of the Solar System in just a few months without the use of a propellant.

Google is aiming to launch a commercial drone delivery service in 2017. Reuters reports that David Vos, who head’s Google’s Project Wing and co-chairs a drone registry task force for the Federal Aviation Administration, announced Google’s plans at an air traffic control convention in Washington last week. He said the FAA is discussing setting up an air traffic control system that would use cellular and internet technology to manage unmanned aerial vehicles (a.ka. drones) flying at altitudes lower than 500 feet. Amazon proposed a similar system in July.

An MIT researcher built a small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV, or drone) that can fly itself while avoiding obstacles in its path. Andrew Barry, a PhD student at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL), says, “Everyone is building drones these days, but nobody knows how to get them to stop running into things.” Popular recreational drones can’t fly themselves because the required equipment, such as Lidar sensors, are too big to fit on their small frames. To get around this, Barry came up with an efficient algorithm that saves time and space by processing only the necessary information.

A Swedish man can make payments by simply waving his hand. Patric Lanhed, a software developer at DigitasLBi, made this futuristic payment possible by implanting a radio frequency identification (RFID) chip in his hand. This week he successfully transferred money into his Bitcoin wallet by holding his hand up to a sensor, which read the RFID chip under his skin.

Lithium-air batteries have the potential to be the ultimate battery, with ten times the storage capacity of their lithium-ion counterparts. Scientists at the University of Cambridge in the U.K. have now developed a prototype of a lithium-oxygen battery that is more than 90 percent efficient, with high energy density and the ability to be recharged more than 2,000 times.

ELectrical engineers developed a new phototransistor that is flexible, yet faster and more responsive than any similar phototransistor in the world.

German scientists are about to turn on a nuclear fusion machine that has the potential to unlock a new clean, safe, and abundant power source. Engineers at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics spend 1.1 million working hours building the machine, called the Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X).