sensors

Perhaps the most famous graphical tactile system is braille. While it’s difficult to learn, there are at least two reasons speech recognition hasn’t made braille obsolete: first, we may have underestimated the need to interact with our…

An image that always tugs at the heart strings is that of a tiny infant in an incubator, hooked up to multiple devices that, while necessary to monitor the baby’s health, make it difficult for parents and caregivers to give newborns the…

Researchers can extract a lot of valuable information from evolution. That's what happened when a Harvard engineering team looked at jumping spiders. These small arachnids have impressive depth perception despite their tiny brains, allowing…

By incorporating IoT into their designs, engineers have the power to create more efficiencies across the business and industrial world.

While the most valuable aspect of human-machine interfaces (HMIs) from an industrial perspective is the ability to closely monitor production and respond to changing demands, there are also many benefits for non-industrial applications.…

We talk and talk and talk each day, not realizing the complexity that goes into such an action. Speaking involves both mouth movement and vibration of the folded tissues referred to as the vocal cords. If the vocal cords sustain injuries…

Without a sense of touch, humans risk injury from heat, cold, and abrasions. While robots are inherently sturdier than human skin, without a sense of touch they are limited in the ways they can interact with humans. But robots and…

Accelerometer design inevitably leads to trade-offs between the size reduction and the noise reduction. Mechanical noise is inversely proportional to the mass of the moving electrode. Additionally, sensitivity is generally proportional to…

Earthquakes cause immediate damage to structures and roads. But assessing the damages and determining whether buildings—especially hospitals, schools, and community centers—are safe to re-enter takes time when the assessments are done…