We’ve talked a lot on the show about the many different skills robots are learning. Now we can tell you about Experimental Sport Tennis Wheelchair Robot, which is learning to play tennis.
Drones are becoming increasingly useful, but they can get damaged and grounded pretty quickly. A team at MIT has found bee-inspired workarounds that would keep impaired robotic crafts flying.
There's a team at Northwestern University that's ready to help the tired vocal cords of the world: a wearable device that can tell when a voice needs a break.
Back braces for scoliosis haven't always been the most comfortable or fun to wear in public. But Airy, the newest prototype back brace, could even be called stylish.
Researchers at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology took stem cells and treated them with high-frequency sound waves, which was enough to convert them into bone cells.
Taxiing accounts for about 5 percent of a jet's fuel consumption, so one way to make flying greener is making taxiing greener, like through an all-electric towing system.
Our wireless, hands-free, automatic, smart device era may be about to get even smarter, thanks to high-tech smart fabric that can send out signals to devices or turn itself into a health monitor. Plus: a trash barrel from the US goes on holiday, traveling all the way across the ocean to end up in Ireland.
The Olympic Games are supposed to bring the countries of the world together, but that isn't always what happens. Several times the Games have been canceled, and at other times, boycotts have led some countries to hold their own alternative competitions. Plus: we mark the birthday of the great Black scientist and inventor Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson.
Our high-tech devices are amazing but also kind of fragile. But a team at Virginia Tech has a solution: “soft electronics” that can not only keep working when they’re damaged, they can heal themselves. Plus: NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech have been using high-altitude balloons to measure seismic activity, and they're hoping to send those balloons someday to monitor Venusquakes!
A device in Denmark, WasteShark, has been roaming through water to scoop up floating debris. Now it's going to have a flying companion drone to help spot waste and maybe even clean up oil spills. Plus: photographer Nancy Floyd has been taking self-portraits and other images, structured the same way, day after day since 1982, to show the passage of time. Talk about playing the long game.
