Category: Computers

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a low cost, low power technology to help robots accurately map their way indoors, even in poor lighting and without recognizable landmarks or features. The technology consists of sensors that use WiFi signals to help the robot map where it’s going. It’s a new approach […]

Researchers from ETH Zurich, the University of Zurich and Empa have developed a new material for an electronic component that can be used in a wider range of applications than its predecessors. Such components will help create electronic circuits that emulate the human brain and that are more efficient at performing machine-​learning tasks. Compared with […]

Compact and lightweight metasurfaces — which use specifically designed and patterned nanostructures on a flat surface to focus, shape and control light — are a promising technology for wearable applications, especially virtual and augmented reality systems. Today, research teams painstakingly design the specific pattern of nanostructures on the surface to achieve the desired function of […]

Engineering researchers have developed a new approach for implementing ransomware detection techniques, allowing them to detect a broad range of ransomware far more quickly than previous systems. Ransomware is a type of malware. When a system is infiltrated by ransomware, the ransomware encrypts that system’s data — making the data inaccessible to users. The people […]

Physical reservoir computing (PRC), which relies on the transient response of physical systems, is an attractive machine learning framework that can perform high-speed processing of time-series signals at low power. However, PRC systems have low tunability, limiting the signals it can process. Now, researchers from Japan present ionic liquids as an easily tunable physical reservoir […]

Harnessing the power that makes the sun and stars shine could be made easier by powerful magnets with straighter shapes than have been made before. Researchers linked to the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have found a way to create such magnets for fusion facilities known as stellarators. Such facilities […]

Researchers have shown it is possible to perform artificial intelligence using tiny nanomagnets that interact like neurons in the brain. The new method, developed by a team led by Imperial College London researchers, could slash the energy cost of artificial intelligence (AI), which is currently doubling globally every 3.5 months. In a paper published today […]

Researchers have used a widespread species of blue-green algae to power a microprocessor continuously for a year — and counting — using nothing but ambient light and water. Their system has potential as a reliable and renewable way to power small devices. The system, comparable in size to an AA battery, contains a type of […]

Our electronics can no longer shrink and are on the verge of overheating. But in a new discovery from the University of Copenhagen, researchers have uncovered a fundamental property of magnetism, which may become relevant for the development of a new generation of more powerful and less hot computers. The ongoing miniaturization of components for […]

Technique could reduce costs of battery development. Imagine a psychic telling your parents, on the day you were born, how long you would live. A similar experience is possible for battery chemists who are using new computational models to calculate battery lifetimes based on as little as a single cycle of experimental data. In a […]