Accurate timing is something that’s always been of interest to me. These days we rely heavily on time delivered to us over the Internet, through radio waves from GPS satellites, or broadcast stations. But I wanted a clock that would keep excellent time without relying on the outs … | Continue reading
Generative AI is today’s buzziest form of artificial intelligence, and it’s what powers chatbots like ChatGPT, Ernie, LLaMA, Claude, and Cohere—as well as image generators like DALL-E 2, Stable Diffusion, Adobe Firefly, and Midjourney. Generative AI is the branch of AI that enabl … | Continue reading
In the days before the U.S. Democratic Party’s New Hampshire primary election on 23 January, potential voters began receiving a call with AI-generated audio of a fake President Biden urging them not to vote until the general election in November. Voters in Slovakia audio posted t … | Continue reading
Odorigui is a type of Japanese cuisine in which people consume live seafood while it’s still moving, making movement part of the experience. You may have some feelings about this (I definitely do), but from a research perspective, getting into what those feelings are and what the … | Continue reading
Happy birthday, IBM! You’re 100 years old! Or are you?It’s true that the businesses that formed IBM began in the late 1800s. But it’s also true that a birth occurred in February 1924, with the renaming of the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co. as the International Business Machin … | Continue reading
Just last month, Oslo, Norway-based 1X (formerly Halodi Robotics) announced a massive $100 million Series B, and clearly they’ve been putting the work in. A new video posted last week shows a [insert collective noun for humanoid robots here] of EVE android-ish mobile manipulators … | Continue reading
E-bikes are today a growing component of the global transition away from fossil fuels—possibly more than the car-and-truck-focused sustainability crowd appreciates. E-bikes’ rapid growth in recent years stems in part from their simple solution to the range issue that big, hulking … | Continue reading
This is a guest post. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not represent positions of IEEE Spectrum or the IEEE. If Disney’s history of storytelling has taught us anything, it’s to never underestimate the power of a great sidekick. Even though sidekicks … | Continue reading
In honor of the IEEE Foundation’s 50th anniversary, 16 February has been established as IEEE Foundation Day—a Celebration of the Heart. The theme reflects the Foundation’s vision of being the heart of IEEE’s charitable giving and philanthropy.On 16 February 1973, IEEE launched it … | Continue reading
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.Cybathlon Challenges: 02 February 20 … | Continue reading
Samuel K. Moore Hi. I’m Samuel K. Moore for IEEE Spectrum‘s Fixing the Future podcast. Before we start, I want to tell you that you can get the latest coverage from some of Spectrum‘s most important beats, including AI, climate change, and robotics, by signing up for one of our f … | Continue reading
This is a guest post. For the other side of the argument about open-source AI, see the recent guest post “Open-Source AI Is Uniquely Dangerous.“A culture war in AI is emerging between those who believe that the development of models should be restricted or unrestricted by default … | Continue reading
It’s kind of astonishing how quadrotors have scaled over the last decade. Like, we’re now at the point where they’re verging on disposable, at least from a commercial or research perspective—for a bit over US $200, you can buy a little 27-gram, completely open source drone, and a … | Continue reading
This post is dedicated to the memory of Niklaus Wirth, a computing pioneer who passed away 1 January 2024. In 1995 he wrote an influential article called “A Plea for Lean Software,” published in Computer, the magazine for members of the IEEE Computer Society, which I read early i … | Continue reading
The dream of fusion power inched closer to reality in December 2022, when researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory revealed that a fusion reaction had produced more energy than what was required to kickstart it. According to new research, the momentary fusion feat re … | Continue reading
About a decade ago, there was a lot of excitement in the robotics world around gecko-inspired directional adhesives, which are materials that stick without being sticky using the same van der Waals forces that allow geckos to scamper around on vertical panes of glass. They were u … | Continue reading
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, approximately 15 percent of net anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions come from the transportation sector. To meet global climate targets, we must devise ways to get people and goods from point A to point B without burn … | Continue reading
Volunteers are needed to serve as corporate officers, committee chairs, and members. IEEE is governed by volunteer members and depends on them for many things, including editing its publications, organizing conferences, coordinating regional and local activities, writing standard … | Continue reading
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.Cybathlon Challenges: 02 February 20 … | Continue reading
Kingsley Fregene wants to keep people out of harm’s way—so much so that he has ordered his life around that fundamental goal. As director of technology integration at Lockheed Martin, in Grand Prairie, Texas, he leads a team that is actively pursuing breakthroughs designed to, am … | Continue reading
If you, like me, think of musical synthesizers as an artifact of 1970s rock and disco, then you, like me, will be surprised to learn that the first electronic synthesizer predates those genres by several decades In 1945, Hugh Le Caine, a physicist at Canada’s National Research Co … | Continue reading
Engineers in the United States and Taiwan say they have demonstrated a promising new twist on nonvolatile memory that’s small enough, miserly when it comes to energy, and works at low enough voltage that it could boost the abilities of future processors.The device is a type of ph … | Continue reading
Over the past decade, one of the biggest stories in semiconductors has been a surprise eclipsing of traditional silicon—in the field of power electronics, where silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN) have raced past silicon to capture multibilllion-dollar segments of the … | Continue reading
The rising popularity of artificial intelligence has impacted the entire world, including the tiny island of Anguilla. Located in the Caribbean, the country, home to about 15,000 people, has a unique and suddenly in-demand resource.In the late 1980s, the Internet Assigned Numbers … | Continue reading
Citing “no path to regulatory approval in the European Union,” Amazon and iRobot have announced the termination of an acquisition deal first announced in August of 2022 that would have made iRobot a part of Amazon and valued the robotics company at US $1.4 billion.The European Co … | Continue reading
Since its founding in 1995 at Purdue University, the Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) in IEEE program has been providing nonprofit organizations with technology to improve and deliver services to their community while broadening undergraduate EE students’ hands-o … | Continue reading
In recent years, AI ethicists have had a tough job. The engineers developing generative AI tools have been racing ahead, competing with each other to create models of even more breathtaking abilities, leaving both regulators and ethicists to comment on what’s already been done. O … | Continue reading
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.Cybathlon Challenges: 2 February 202 … | Continue reading
IEEE Life Fellow Robert E. Kahn, widely known as one of the “fathers of the Internet,” is the recipient of the 2024 IEEE Medal of Honor. He is being recognized for “pioneering technical and leadership contributions in packet communication technologies and foundations of the Inter … | Continue reading
Recent solid-state battery announcements by Volkswagen and QuantumScape are raising hopes in the electric vehicle market, but automotive battery experts are warning that the road to widespread, solid-state success is still a long and arduous one. A single breakthrough, as if from … | Continue reading
The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter made its 72nd and final flight on 18 January. “While the helicopter remains upright and in communication with ground controllers,” NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab said in a press release this afternoon, “imagery of its Jan. 18 flight sent to Earth this wee … | Continue reading
Eliza Strickland: Hi, I’m Eliza Strickland for IEEE Spectrum‘s Fixing the Future podcast. Before we start, I want to tell you that you can get the latest coverage from some of Spectrum‘s most important beats, including AI, climate change, and robotics, by signing up for one of ou … | Continue reading
International Data Corp. estimated that US $118 billion was spent globally in 2022 to purchase artificial intelligence hardware, software, and data services. IDC has predicted the figure will nearly triple, to $300 billion, by 2026. But public procurement systems are not ready fo … | Continue reading
Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen a couple of high-profile videos of robotic systems doing really impressive things. And I mean, that’s what we’re all here for, right? Being impressed by the awesomeness of robots! But sometimes the awesomeness of robots is more complicated than … | Continue reading
In work and in life, it’s easy to get stuck in your ways. That’s why Manan Suri has always looked to expand his horizons both professionally and personally. Growing up in India, he was used to transitions and new experiences because his family frequently moved around the country … | Continue reading
One of the knocks on the potential of electric vehicles has been the paucity of charging stations compared with the near-ubiquitous presence of gas stations. The standard question posed by EV naysayers is, “What if an EV’s battery is nearly depleted and the nearest charging stati … | Continue reading
The shipping industry has been trying to cut its carbon emissions for years, and with little to show for it. Nearly all of the world’s ship fleet still runs on diesel fuel, with about a quarter of new ships on order being built to run on somewhat lower-carbon alternatives like li … | Continue reading
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.Cybathlon Challenges: 02 February 20 … | Continue reading
When 7-year-old John Cioffi ran up to the Bell System pavilion at the 1964-1965 World’s Fair in New York City, he couldn’t wait to see the first telephone with video: the much-lauded Picturephone.The boy had been disappointed that phone calls provided only audio. He gazed up at t … | Continue reading
You’re familiar with Karel Čapek, right? If not, you should be—he’s the guy who (along with his brother Josef) invented the word “robot.” Čapek introduced robots to the world in 1921, when his play “R.U.R.” (subtitled “Rossum’s Universal Robots”) was first performed in Prague. It … | Continue reading
It’s heady times in power electronics. After decades of domination by silicon, two newer materials—silicon carbide and gallium nitride—have begun taking over multibillion-dollar markets. Silicon carbide is now the semiconductor of choice for the inverters and chargers in electric … | Continue reading
Robert Saracco, an IEEE senior member dedicated to empowering the next generation of digital innovators in Europe, died unexpectedly on 5 December at the age of 70. He was a key figure in the creation of EIT Digital, an organization that invests in research and continuing educati … | Continue reading
As healthcare wearables for various medical conditions and situations proliferate, patients inevitably want their wearable tech as inconspicuous and worry-free as possible. As a case in point, consider a new wearable mesh health-monitor that does away with the “box and a strap” a … | Continue reading
At CES this past week, the trucking startup Nikola showed off a hydrogen-fueled semi truck, one of its first ever built in the U.S. But the troubled company with a convicted founder is not the only player these days seeing a promising future in fuel-cell fueled big rigs. Daimler … | Continue reading
The IEEE Board of Directors has nominated IEEE Fellows Mary Ellen Randall, John Verboncoeur, and S.K. Ramesh as candidates for 2025 IEEE president-elect.The winner of this year’s election will serve as IEEE president in 2026. For more information about the election, president-ele … | Continue reading
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.Cybathlon Challenges: 02 February 20 … | Continue reading
This is a guest post. The views expressed here are solely those of the authors and do not represent positions of IEEE Spectrum or the IEEE.When people think of AI applications these days, they likely think of “closed-source” AI applications like OpenAI’s ChatGPT—where the system’ … | Continue reading
Stephen Cass: Hello and welcome to Fixing the Future, an IEEE Spectrum podcast, where we look at concrete solutions to some big problems. I’m your host, Stephen Cass, a senior editor at IEEE Spectrum. And before we start, I just want to tell you that you can get the latest covera … | Continue reading