All Features
Ron Cowen
A single atom-thick sheet of carbon known as graphene has remarkable properties on its own. But things can get even more interesting when you stack up multiple sheets.
When two or more overlying sheets of graphene are slightly misaligned—twisted at certain angles relative to each other—they take…
Matthew Greenwood
It’s no secret the automotive sector is racing to find ways of tapping the potential of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) to design and build the next generation of vehicles. This technology has promise, from redefining manufacturing processes to helping carmakers design smarter, safer,…
Sabine Terrasi
Robots do monotonous workflows and less pleasant, repetitive tasks with brilliance. Combined with image processing, they become “seeing” and reliable supporters of humans. They’re used in quality assurance to check components, help with assembling and positioning components, detect errors and…
Wael William Diab
Artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere—and that’s something to marvel at. AI is powering everything from advanced web searches to social media recommendations and video game design. But it could do infinitely more.
AI has the potential to revolutionize our societies and economies. Discussions…
Ramūnas Berkmanas
Imagine a manufacturing world where machines seamlessly collaborate with artificial intelligence (AI) to ensure flawless quality inspection. It’s a future that holds immense potential for revolutionizing the industry.
Major manufacturers like FANUC, ABB, and KUKA AG, alongside specialized cobot…
Kristopher Lee
A leader in asset integrity management and inspection services, Kakivik Asset Management recently held an intro to phased-array class at its Anchorage, Alaska, office. The training was attended by nearly two dozen ultrasound specialists and was conducted by Shane Walton from the University of…
Renay San Miguel
Active matter is any collection of materials or systems composed of individual units that can move on their own, thanks to self-propulsion or autonomous motion. They can be of any size—think clouds of bacteria in a petri dish, or schools of fish.
Roman Grigoriev is mostly interested in the…
Emily Newton
Pumping systems are critical to many manufacturing operations. Consequently, any errors with this equipment can be costly. So, it’s important to catch oddities as soon as they occur. The internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) enable that kind of pump anomaly detection.…
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
A team of scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has investigated the behavior of hafnium oxide, or hafnia, and its potential for use in novel semiconductor applications.
Materials such as hafnia exhibit ferroelectricity, which means that they are…
Baxi Chong
Adding legs to robots that have minimal awareness of the environment around them can help them operate more effectively in difficult terrain, my colleagues and I found.
We were inspired by mathematician and engineer Claude Shannon’s communication theory about how to transmit signals over distance…
David Suttle
You often hear about self-driving cars and their levels of autonomy. When can drivers completely remove their hands from the steering wheel? This also applies to robots. How can robots become fully autonomous?
What are autonomous robots?
Let’s look at the levels of freedom for self-driving cars…
David Cantor
One of the most concerning uncertainties surrounding the emergence of artificial intelligence is the impact on jobs. Human jobs.
Innovation and progress are cornerstones of mankind. From the invention of the wheel to machine learning, the effect on our lives transcends generations and influences…
Eric Whitley
Manufacturing has come a long way from manual labor and assembly lines. The industry has evolved through various phases, from the Industrial Revolution to mass production, and now to Industry 4.0. Each phase has brought its own set of challenges and opportunities, shaping the way goods are produced…
InnovMetric
Today, manufacturing companies have sophisticated 3D measurement labs with portable and CNC coordinate measuring machines (CMMs), laser scanners, laser trackers, and digital gauges, and every brand of hardware uses its own software solution. When relying on multiple software programs, multiple…
MIT News
The Singapore MIT-Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore, has launched a new interdisciplinary research group aimed at tackling key social and institutional challenges around the rise of artificial intelligence and other new technologies. The group,…
Gleb Tsipursky
Many employees are asking, “Do we really need to go to the office?” as the leadership at major companies like Amazon, Apple, Disney, Starbucks, and JP Morgan mandate three or more days a week of office-based work. Employees are adamant that they are doing their jobs effectively at home, and data…
Del Williams
To move delicate products or powders, most processors do extensive homework before purchasing a tubular drag-cable conveyor to ensure that it meets their needs for function and price. After the purchase, the conveyor must be expertly assembled and tested to ensure smooth production startup and…
Vivian Lam
The microscope is an iconic symbol of the life sciences, and for good reason. From the discovery of the existence of cells to the structure of DNA, microscopy has been a quintessential tool of the field, unlocking new dimensions of the living world not only for scientists but also for the general…
Chandrakant Isi
Apple’s Vision Pro announcement has sparked a renewed interest in the world of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). Looking through the lens of industrial environments, these technologies have already made significant contributions in manufacturing, maintenance, and training processes.…
Vanessa Bates Ramirez
If you’ve seen the Terminator movies, you may remember the shape-shifting humanoid robot T-1000. Made of liquid metal, it could instantly self-heal bullet wounds and other injuries, its metal simply oozing back together and making any damage disappear. Decades after the concept of self-healing…
Kobi Leins, ISO
Untitled Document
In everyday life, the most common conversation about artificial intelligence (AI) goes along the lines of, “I used ChatGPT, and it did x.” Corporate leaders, governments, and international organizations, however, are having a very different conversation. Theirs is about how the…
Harald Remmert
William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, once said that what he could measure he could control. Other variations of this saying are, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it,” or, “To measure is to know.” In a highly intricate and delicate industry like utilities, it’s challenging to have reliable…
Rob McAveney
For most discrete manufacturing companies, digital transformation initiatives are underway in some capacity. They’re largely seen as table stakes in today’s economy. Unfortunately, outdated systems and procedures often bring problems that hinder these initiatives.
A lack of consistency among…
Jennifer Chu
Getting blood test results can take anywhere from a day to a week, depending on what a test is targeting. The same goes for tests of water pollution and food contamination. And in most cases, the wait time has to do with time-consuming steps in sample processing and analysis.
Now, MIT engineers…
NIST
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines can clearly view non-bony parts of the body—soft tissue such as the brain, muscles, and ligaments—as well as detect tumors, making it possible to diagnose many diseases and other conditions. However, the powerful magnets in conventional MRI machines make…
