Engineering
Engineering is the discipline of design and construction of mechanical devices, equipment, structures and public works systems. Topics include aircraft technologies, buildings, bridges, robotics and heavy machinery.
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Rovables: Tiny Robots That Roll on Your Clothes All Day
Researchers have developed wearable, mobile robots that can act as sensors, displays and even a necklace.
Statcheck: When Bots 'Correct' Academics
A new application called Statcheck is bringing some academics a lot closer to AI. Not everyone's a fan.
Robots Made With Living Tissue? That Future Is Arriving Now
What are the benefits of growing living tissue in a lab and fusing it to a robotic body? This Fw:Thinking video explores our cyborg future.
London 'Smile' Challenges World to Build Smarter Wooden Structures
This year's London Design Festival features a long wooden tube that shows the potential of hardwood as a versatile building material.
Mudskipper Robot Helps Show How Vertebrates Evolved to Walk on Land
A robot to simulate mudskipper locomotion gives scientists a look into the success of the first land vertebrate ancestors, and points to our future on other planets.
Pee-resistant Paint: Coming to a Train Station Near You
Add Philadelphia to the list of cities testing out paint that repels pee back on the urinater as a deterrent. Good call or unnecessary humiliation?
Cool Off and Save Energy by Wearing This New Plastic Fabric
A new fabric that can block visible light and let out body heat could have more important applications than just new workout clothes, researchers say.
Robots May Take Millions of U.S. Jobs by 2021
The robot workforce is growing, according to new research — and millions of U.S. jobs could be on the line.
Your Thoughts Could Activate a Tiny Robot Inside Your Own Brain
For the first time, Israeli researchers have developed a system that lets a human use brain waves to control nanobots in a cockroach. How could that help your health?
Airports That Float
What do you do when you're out of land but want to expand an airport? Try building on water.
Octobot Is a Squishy, Cute, Autonomous Robot
And someday soft-bodied bots like this could slither in and out of your belly and revolutionize biomedical technology.
Manure Goes Couture: This Clothing Used to Be Cow Poop
If Jalila Essaidi's company Mestic has anything to do with it, the future of fashion — and basically everything else we use in our daily lives — is poop.
Police Used a Robot to Kill Dallas Suspect — And It'll Happen Again
While the recent robotic lethal force by police in Dallas may be shocking, experts say it's legal, and we're likely to see it happen again.
Robotic Rectums Give Docs a Feel for Prostates
Not surprisingly, there aren't a lot of volunteers for doctors to practice manual prostate exams on. Enter the robotic rectum. We like to call it a robum.
Chatbot Delivers Justice, One Parking Ticket at a Time
Parking tickets are a pain. Chatbots can be too. But that hasn't stopped one programmer from creating a bot to help overturn thousands of tickets.
SpotMini: A Robot Dog Capable of Doing Dishes, Delivering Drinks
Google-owned company Boston Dynamics is at the forefront of creating lifelike robots.
There's One Terrific Reason to Race Camels Using Robot Jockeys
There's more to replacing human riders than just using cool tech, as the advancement helps solve a serious human rights issue.
Watch the World's Highest Glass Bridge Get Sledgehammered
China's Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon glass-bottomed bridge is so high most of the world's buildings would fit in the gap between it and the canyon floor. So why not hit it?
This Man Built His Own Life-size Robot Version of a Hollywood Star
Just call it RoboScarJo 2.0. But what does it mean for privacy rights when someone can literally objectify another human being, celebrity or otherwise, like this?
Prof's Teaching Assistant Isn't Human
Any guesses as to what it was, if not some grad student?
Swallowed a Battery? No Problem. Just Eat This Tiny Robot, Too.
Doctors see it all, including 3,500 people who swallow button batteries annually. Soon those docs may get help from tiny, edible robots that can retrieve foreign objects.
Tiny Robot Monk Joins the Fold at Beijing Buddhist Temple
The diminutive robot Xian'er was based on a cartoon, and can chat about Buddhism using artificial intelligence programming.
The Possible Uses of This ‘Second Skin’ Are Pretty Amazing
If you give us a tunable polysiloxane-based material, 21st century Americans can’t resist going full-on Kardashian with it.
Skyscrapers of the Future Could Be Made of Wood
Steel and glass office towers are the norm in most modern cities. But some imaginative architects want to switch to a renewable, less carbon-intensive old standby: wood.
Tiny Robots Take on Heavy Metals in Wastewater
Scientists created microbots that can remove pollutants from contaminated water. Could these simple machines provide an efficient way to clean up toxic wastewater?
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