Featured
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News |
Tiny robots made from human cells heal damaged tissue
The ‘anthrobots’ were able to repair a scratch in a layer of neurons in the lab.
- Matthew Hutson
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Nature Video |
Super hot plasma made easy with stabilising fibres
Carbon fibre blocks could make it easier to create uniform high temperature plasma for manufacturing and research.
- Shamini Bundell
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News |
How does it feel to have an octopus arm? This robo-tentacle lets people find out
Mimicking the snatch and grab of an octopus snaring its prey required a new way of thinking about robotics.
- Bianca Nogrady
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News & Views |
From the archive: a juice extractor in an insect’s gut, and amateur radio telephony
Snippets from Nature’s past.
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Research Highlight |
Leonardo’s construction design takes shape centuries later
Researchers make a 3D-printed beam based on the Renaissance polymath’s idea for a masonry structure.
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Nature Video |
The 3D printer that crafts complex robotic organs in a single run
Combining machine vision with contactless error correction allows for even more advanced multi-material printing.
- Dan Fox
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News & Views |
Multi-material 3D printing guided by machine vision
A 3D printer uses machine vision to solve a problem that has plagued 3D inkjet printers, increasing the range of materials that can be used, and enabling the rapid production of complex objects such as a robot hand.
- Yong Lin Kong
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Article
| Open Access
Vision-controlled jetting for composite systems and robots
We have developed an automated and high-throughput, three-dimensional, vision-controlled inkjet deposition process that enables the high-resolution, contactless printing of a range of materials with varying elastic moduli to create complex structures and robots.
- Thomas J. K. Buchner
- , Simon Rogler
- & Robert K. Katzschmann
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Nature Video |
The robot chemist helping to pave the way to settlements on Mars
An AI-assisted robot, could use Martian rock to autonomously generate oxygen on the red planet
- Noah Baker
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Career Feature |
The future is quantum: universities look to train engineers for an emerging industry
With quantum technologies heading for the mainstream, undergraduate courses are preparing the workforce of the future.
- Sophia Chen
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Research Highlight |
A robot performs heart surgery with a strong but delicate touch
Device can wield tools inside one of the heart’s chambers while bracing itself against a stabilizer fitted into a major cardiac vein.
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News & Views |
Hydrogel implant rehabilitates muscles through electrical stimulation
An electrically conductive hydrogel injected into an injured muscle can help the muscle to regenerate and reconnect with the nervous system. This effective soft prosthesis has enabled rats to walk soon after muscular injury.
- Milica Radisic
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Article |
Injectable tissue prosthesis for instantaneous closed-loop rehabilitation
An injectable hydrogel for use as a scaffold to aid tissue repair is described, the material of which is conductive so that it can be used both for electrophysiological measurement and electrostimulation in closed-loop robot-assisted rehabilitation.
- Subin Jin
- , Heewon Choi
- & Mikyung Shin
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Article
| Open Access
All-analog photoelectronic chip for high-speed vision tasks
An all-analog chip combining electronic and light computing achieves systemic energy efficiency of more than three orders of magnitude and a computing speed of more than one order of magnitude compared with state-of-the-art computing processors.
- Yitong Chen
- , Maimaiti Nazhamaiti
- & Qionghai Dai
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News & Views |
The compact accelerator that keeps electrons on the straight and narrow
A silicon-based device uses laser light to accelerate electrons and simultaneously shape them into a narrow beam. The principle could be used to build microchip accelerators that do away with bulky conventional designs.
- Yelong Wei
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Article
| Open Access
State estimation of a physical system with unknown governing equations
A parametrization strategy for stochastic variational inference with Markov Gaussian processes is presented for state estimation of a physical system whose underlying dynamical equations are partially or completely unknown.
- Kevin Course
- & Prasanth B. Nair
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Article
| Open Access
Bridging two insect flight modes in evolution, physiology and robophysics
Asynchronous flight in all major groups of insects likely arose from a single common ancestor with reversions to a synchronous flight mode enabled by shifts back and forth between different regimes in the same set of dynamic parameters.
- Jeff Gau
- , James Lynch
- & Simon Sponberg
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News |
These ancient whittled logs could be the earliest known wooden structure
Stacked timbers dated to roughly 476,000 years ago show that ancient hominins worked with wood.
- Ewen Callaway
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Article |
Multistable sheets with rewritable patterns for switchable shape-morphing
To demonstrate the power of multistability, a specific class of groovy metasheets is introduced as a new shape-morphing platform that allows repeated switching from the flat state to multiple, precisely selected and stable three-dimensional shapes.
- A. S. Meeussen
- & M. van Hecke
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News Explainer |
Why was the Morocco earthquake so deadly?
The quake, which has killed thousands, was unusually large for Morocco and struck a region where most buildings are not earthquake-resilient.
- Michael Marshall
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Article |
Turbulence suppression by cardiac-cycle-inspired driving of pipe flow
Turbulence can be reduced by more than 25% in ordinary pipe flow by unsteady, pulsatile driving specifically mimicking the cardiac cycle and extending this method to large Reynolds numbers.
- D. Scarselli
- , J. M. Lopez
- & B. Hof
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Nature Video |
AI finally beats humans at a real-life sport — drone racing
The new system combines simulation with onboard sensing and computation.
- Dan Fox
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Article
| Open Access
Champion-level drone racing using deep reinforcement learning
An autonomous system is described that combines deep reinforcement learning with onboard sensors collecting data from the physical world, enabling it to fly faster than human world champion drone pilots around a race track.
- Elia Kaufmann
- , Leonard Bauersfeld
- & Davide Scaramuzza
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News & Views |
Drone-racing champions outpaced by AI
An autonomous drone has competed against human drone-racing champions — and won. The victory can be attributed to savvy engineering and a type of artificial intelligence that learns mostly through trial and error.
- Guido C. H. E. de Croon
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Article
| Open Access
A microscale soft ionic power source modulates neuronal network activity
A study describes the development of a miniaturized hydrogel-based soft power source capable of modulating the activity of networks of neuronal cells without the need for metal electrodes.
- Yujia Zhang
- , Jorin Riexinger
- & Hagan Bayley
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News & Views |
Analog chip paves the way for sustainable AI
As the resources required by artificial intelligence increase unsustainably, an analog design provides an energy-efficient alternative to digital computer chips — and one that is ideally suited to neural-network computations.
- Hechen Wang
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News & Views |
Brain implants that enable speech pass performance milestones
Two brain–computer interfaces have been developed that bring unprecedented capabilities for translating brain signals into sentences — at speeds close to that of normal speech, and with vocabularies exceeding 1,000 words.
- Nick F. Ramsey
- & Nathan E. Crone
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Article
| Open Access
An analog-AI chip for energy-efficient speech recognition and transcription
A low-power chip that runs AI models using analog rather than digital computation shows comparable accuracy on speech-recognition tasks but is more than 14 times as energy efficient.
- S. Ambrogio
- , P. Narayanan
- & G. W. Burr
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Article |
A high-performance neuroprosthesis for speech decoding and avatar control
A study using high-density surface recordings of the speech cortex in a person with limb and vocal paralysis demonstrates real-time decoding of brain activity into text, speech sounds and orofacial movements.
- Sean L. Metzger
- , Kaylo T. Littlejohn
- & Edward F. Chang
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Career Q&A |
The Indigenous rocketeer
Nicole McGaa combined Indigenous knowledge with engineering to build a rocket for the First Nations Launch competition.
- Abdullahi Tsanni
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Perspective |
The future transistors
The challenges and opportunities for the design of field-effect transistors are discussed and a vision of future transistors and potential innovation opportunities is provided.
- Wei Cao
- , Huiming Bu
- & Kaustav Banerjee
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News & Views |
From the archive: a prize for the design of a helicopter, and a venomous caterpillar
Snippets from Nature’s past.
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Nature Video |
These shapes roll in peculiar ways thanks to new mathematics
An algorithm can design a shape to follow almost any repeating path downhill.
- Shamini Bundell
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Article |
Solid-body trajectoids shaped to roll along desired pathways
An algorithm is developed to design a shape, a trajectoid, that can trace any given infinite periodic trajectory when rolling down a slope, finding unexpected implications for quantum and classical optics.
- Yaroslav I. Sobolev
- , Ruoyu Dong
- & Bartosz A. Grzybowski
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Where I Work |
Feeding bacteria seaweed to make compostable plastic
Bioprocess engineer Jesús E. Rodríguez’s team dreams of replacing all synthetic plastics with biodegradable products.
- Patricia Maia Noronha
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News |
How Beijing’s deadly floods could be avoided
The floods that have swept China in the past week were exacerbated by poor planning for drainage.
- Gemma Conroy
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News & Views |
Heat-assisted imaging enables day-like visibility at night
An imaging technique that uses a neural-network model to obtain physical information from infrared radiation improves on existing techniques in low-visibility situations, and could be deployed immediately in autonomous vehicles.
- Manish Bhattarai
- & Sophia Thompson
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Article |
Heat-assisted detection and ranging
Heat-assisted detection and ranging is experimentally shown to see texture and depth through darkness as if it were day, and also perceives decluttered physical attributes beyond RGB or thermal vision.
- Fanglin Bao
- , Xueji Wang
- & Zubin Jacob
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Technology Feature |
A pink rover tackles the red planet — and barriers for women in science
An Australian team designed the eye-catching robot to spark conversations about diversity in engineering and robotics.
- Amanda Heidt
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Article |
Fluidic self-assembly for MicroLED displays by controlled viscosity
A MicroLED lighting panel, assembled in 60 s by a surface-tension-driven fluidic self-assembly technique, gave a yield as high as 99.90% through the addition of a small amount of poloxamer to the assembly solution.
- Daewon Lee
- , Seongkyu Cho
- & Sunghoon Kwon
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Nature Video |
A robotic raspberry teaches machines how to pick fruit
This fake raspberry allows researchers to train fruit-picking robots in the lab before field tests.
- Shamini Bundell
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Outlook |
Robots need better batteries
As mobile machines travel farther from the grid, they’ll need lightweight and efficient power sources.
- Jeff Hecht
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Nature Video |
The bio-inspired ‘transformer’ that crawls, rolls and flies
A ‘multimodal’ robot gains efficiencies by tailoring itself to the needs of the task.
- Dan Fox
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Career Q&A |
Women in engineering: using hydrology to manage Jordan’s scarce water
Esraa Tarawneh says research and data gathering can improve her country’s resilience to droughts and rare flash floods.
- Jacqui Thornton
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Career Q&A |
Women in engineering: giving Porsche 911s the ‘ultimate’ makeover
As a child, Imogen Howarth enjoyed solving problems and playing with cars. Now, she helps to redesign a classic and acts as a role model for aspiring female engineers.
- Jacqui Thornton
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News Q&A |
Lost Titanic sub: an ocean scientist talks about dive safety
Oceanographer Peter Girguis offers an insider view of deep-sea exploration.
- Katharine Sanderson
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News Explainer |
Ukraine dam collapse: what scientists are watching
Extensive flooding could have severe consequences for farming, health and the environment.
- Miryam Naddaf
This cyborg cockroach could be the future of earthquake search and rescue