A day of strong sunlight can spoil more than just a beach outing — it can also harm the process of photosynthesis, the way plants and other organisms convert sunlight into energy. Underwater, however, certain algae have evolved a unique way to…
Category: Engineering
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Weekly Robotics #333
While doing research for today’s issue, I came across a 200-page PDF containing a teardown of Boston Dynamics’ Spot. Since it likely contains sensitive information, I decided against linking it in the newsletter. It made me think that if…
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Qualcomm’s Arduino Acquisition Stirs Open-Source Debate
On 7 October, the open-source hardware community woke up to surprising news. Qualcomm, the tech giant behind the Snapdragon chips found in billions of smartphones, tablets, and laptops worldwide, had acquired Arduino, an Italian hardware company…
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Scientists 3D-print materials that stop vibrations cold
Scientific breakthroughs rarely happen all at once. More often, they evolve slowly, as researchers and engineers build on years of steady progress until the extraordinary eventually becomes routine.
Now, scientists may be reaching a turning point…
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Robot Talk Episode 129 – Automating museum experiments, with Yuen Ting Chan
Claire chatted to Yuen Ting Chan from Natural History Museum about using robots to automate molecular biology experiments.
Yuen Ting Chan has nearly 20 years of experience working on…
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COMSOL Multiphysics Improves Battery and Grid Designs
A prototyping problem is emerging in today’s efforts to electrify everything. What works as a lab-bench mockup breaks in reality. Harnessing and safely storing energy at grid scale and in cars, trucks, and planes is a very hard problem that…
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New Model Helps Robots See in 3D
CMU, Meta Researchers Develop Universal System for 3D Reconstruction
October 16, 2025 Mallory Lindahl
The Breakdown:
- Researchers developed a model that converts data into precise 3D maps.
- Trained on real-world scenes,…
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Electric Era’s EV Chargers Boost Grid Efficiency
As a young SpaceX engineer, Quincy Lee led a rollout of hundreds of terrestrial antennas for Elon Musk’s Starlink Internet service. The project covered three continents, took just 24 months, and turned out to be great preparation for Lee’s…
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Where Was This Photo Taken? AI Knows Instantly
Imagine playing a new, slightly altered version of the game GeoGuessr. You’re faced with a photo of an average U.S. house, maybe two floors with a front lawn in a cul-de-sac and an American flag flying proudly out front. But there’s nothing…
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What’s coming up at #IROS2025?
The 2025 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2025) will be held from 19-25 October in Hangzhou, China. The programme includes plenary and keynote talks, workshops, tutorials, forums, competitions, and a…
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