Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University’s Mellon College of Science and College of Engineering have developed a semiliquid lithium metal-based anode that represents a new paradigm in battery design. Lithium batteries made using this new electrode type could have a higher capacity and be much safer than typical lithium metal-based batteries that use lithium foil as…
Carnegie Mellon Robot, Art Project To Land on Moon in 2021
Carnegie Mellon University is going to the moon, sending a robotic rover and an intricately designed arts package that will land in July 2021. The four-wheeled robot is being developed by a CMU team led by William “Red” Whittaker, professor in the Robotics Institute. Equipped with video cameras, it will be one of the first American…
Carnegie Mellon Researchers Create Soft, Flexible Materials with Enhanced Properties
A team of polymer chemists and engineers from Carnegie Mellon University have developed a new methodology that can be used to create a class of stretchable polymer composites with enhanced electrical and thermal properties. These materials are promising candidates for use in soft robotics, self-healing electronics and medical devices. The results are published in the…
Finding Keyholes in Metals 3D Printing
Additive manufacturing’s promise to revolutionize industry is constrained by a widespread problem: tiny gas pockets in the final product, which can lead to cracks and other failures. New research published today in Science, led by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and Argonne National Laboratory, has identified how and when these gas pockets form, as well as…
Actuation Gives New Dimensions To An Old Material
Driving Toward The Intersection Of 3D Printing And Machine Learning
Applications of metal additive manufacturing, otherwise known as 3D printing, have primarily been confined to prototyping, but researchers are now pushing closer to developing metal 3D printing as a reliable form of industrial manufacturing. However, major obstacles still need to be addressed, especially in high-risk applications such as aviation components. “One of the biggest hurdles…
Turning Walls Smart
A wall does not have much of function other than supporting the base of our homes and separating rooms. Sometimes, we decorate or paint them, but for the most part walls are pretty static. Now, walls are becoming “smart.” Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Disney Research have created Wall++, a sensing approach that allows our…
Software Automatically Generates Knitting Instructions For 3-D Shapes
Carnegie Mellon University computer scientists have developed a system that can translate a wide variety of 3-D shapes into stitch-by-stitch instructions that enable a computer-controlled knitting machine to automatically produce those shapes. Researchers in the Carnegie Mellon Textiles Lab have used the system to produce a variety of plush toys and garments. What’s more, James…
Pipe-Crawling Robot Will Help Decommission DOE Nuclear Facility
A pair of autonomous robots developed by Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute will soon be driving through miles of pipes at the U.S. Department of Energy’s former uranium enrichment plant in Piketon, Ohio, to identify uranium deposits on pipe walls. The CMU robot has demonstrated it can measure radiation levels more accurately from inside the…
Internet of Things Made Simple: One Sensor Package Does Work of Many
Ubiquitous sensors seem almost synonymous with the internet of things (IoT), but some Carnegie Mellon University researchers say ubiquitous sensing — with a single, general purpose sensor for each room — may be better. The plug-in sensor package they’ve developed monitors multiple phenomena in a room, including things such as sounds, vibration, light, heat, electromagnetic…
Synthetic Nanoparticles Achieve the Complexity of Protein Molecules
Chemists at Carnegie Mellon University have demonstrated that synthetic nanoparticles can achieve the same level of structural complexity, hierarchy and accuracy as their natural counterparts – biomolecules. The study, published in Science, also reveals the atomic-level mechanisms behind nanoparticle self-assembly. The findings from the lab of Chemistry Professor Rongchao Jin provide researchers with an important…
It’s Automatic: Smartphone App Manages Your Privacy Preferences
Chalk up one more task a smartphone app may do better than you: figuring out your privacy settings. A field study suggests a personalized privacy assistant app being developed at Carnegie Mellon University can simplify the chore of setting permissions for your smartphone apps. That’s a task that requires well over a hundred decisions, an…
Making AI Decision-Making Accountable
Machine-learning algorithms increasingly make decisions about credit, medical diagnoses, personalized recommendations, advertising and job opportunities, among other things, but exactly how usually remains a mystery. Now, new measurement methods developed by Carnegie Mellon University researchers could provide important insights to this process. Was it a person’s age, gender or education level that had the most…
Robot’s In-Hand Eye Maps Surroundings, Determines Hand’s Location
Before a robot arm can reach into a tight space or pick up a delicate object, the robot needs to know precisely where its hand is. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute have shown that a camera attached to the robot’s hand can rapidly create a 3-D model of its environment and also locate…
SkinTrack Tech Turns Arm into Smartwatch Touchpad
Ever since the advent of smartwatches, technologists have been looking to expand interactions beyond the confines of the small watch face. A new wearable technology developed at Carnegie Mellon University suggests turning the entire lower arm into a touchpad. Called SkinTrack and developed by the Human-Computer Interaction Institute’s Future Interfaces Group, the new system allows…
In Galaxy Clustering, Mass May Not Be The Only Thing That Matters
An international team of researchers, including Carnegie Mellon University’s Rachel Mandelbaum, has shown that the relationship between galaxy clusters and their surrounding dark matter halo is more complex than previously thought. The researchers’ findings, published in Physical Review Letters today (Jan. 25), are the first to use observational data to show that, in addition to…
Research Team Finds Detailed Record of Mysterious Fast Radio Burst
Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), brief yet brilliant eruptions of cosmic radio waves from the distant universe, have baffled astronomers since they were first reported nearly a decade ago. Though they appear to come from the distant universe, none of these enigmatic events have revealed more than the slimmest details about how and where it formed,…
Team Finds Detailed Record Of Mysterious Fast Radio Burst
Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), brief yet brilliant eruptions of cosmic radio waves, have baffled astronomers since they were first reported nearly a decade ago. Though they appear to come from the distant Universe, none of these enigmatic events has revealed more than the slimmest details about how and where it formed, until now. By poring…
Internal Tagging Technique for 3D-Printed Objects
The age of 3D printing, when every object so created can be personalized, will increase the need for tags to keep track of everything. Happily, the same 3D printing process used to produce an object can simultaneously generate an internal, invisible tag, say scientists at Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft Research. These internal tags, which…