eeDesignIt

How to receive physical smartphone push notifications

Editorial Team Aug 31, 2016

Already crushing its $20,000 goal, a group of UC Berkeley engineers and entrepreneurs have formed IoTa Labs and launched their physical push notification "dot" on Kickstarter. Dot uses precise location tracking to make your smartphone's…

Automotive

Industry’s first Wi-Fi enabled EV charger reference design

Editorial Team Aug 31, 2016

Texas Instruments has introduced the first reference design that adds Wi-Fi connectivity to an Electric Vehicle (EV) charging station. EV owners will now be able to remotely monitor and control the charging of their vehicles from just about…

Automotive

Detecting drivers’ cognitive distraction by analyzing facial expressions

Editorial Team Aug 31, 2016

A group of researchers at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) has developed a system to detect the cognitive distraction of drivers by analysing their facial expressions. Driving requires the constant coordination of many…

Sensors

Wireless sensors improve safety at railway crossings

Editorial Team Aug 31, 2016

Drawing their electrical power from track vibration, networks of tiny wireless sensors could not only improve safety at railway crossings but would also be much less costly to install and maintain. These are among the findings of a UK…

T&M

Evaluating water-testing technologies

Editorial Team Aug 31, 2016

Do you know whether your water is clean and safe to drink? Whether you live in Flint, Michigan, or a half a world away in northwest India, many families don’t have a good answer to this question. People use countless methods to clean their…

A&D

EPFL team bottled it at the CanSat competition

Editorial Team Aug 31, 2016

In June, five EPFL students went to Texas for the competition final, where they put the device they had been working on all year to the test. How did they fare? How do you get an entire spacecraft into a 3.5-liter container, which is the…

Trends

Researchers cut down on the amount of liquid bounce

Editorial Team Aug 31, 2016

Only 2% of the spray sticks to the plants when farmers spray their fields with pesticides or other treatments. A significant portion of it typically bounces right off the plants, lands on the ground, and becomes part of the runoff that…

Wearables

Pre-order the Future: Mind-controlled earphones

Editorial Team Aug 31, 2016

Rapid progress in brain mapping technology means that the ability to control devices with our minds is no longer the stuff of science fiction and the world is poised on the brink of a technological revolution. Neste’s ThinkEar earphones are…

Featured

Cellphone data forms models of urban mobility patterns

Editorial Team Aug 31, 2016

City planners rely on models of how people move through their cities, on foot, in cars, and on public transportation in making decisions about infrastructure development and resource allocation. Those models are largely based on surveys of…

Automotive

‘Internet Car’ redefines network interconnection of vehicles

Editorial Team Aug 31, 2016

The Roewe RX5, also known to be the first 'Internet Car' in the world at the 2016 Beijing International Automotive Exhibition (Auto China 2016) has been jointly announced by SAIC Motor (SAIC) and Alibaba Group (Alibaba). Recently, this…