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IEEE Spectrum

IEEE Spectrum
A Tiny Jumping Robot for Exploring Enceladus Salto has been one of our favorite robots since we were first introduced to it in 2016 as a project...
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Salto has been one of our favorite robots since we were first introduced to it in 2016 as a project out of Ron Fearing’s lab at UC Berkeley. The palm-sized spring-loaded jumping robot has gone from barely being able to chain together a few open-loop jumps to mastering landings,...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Good Over All Terrains Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
5 days ago
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5 days ago
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. RoboCup German Open: 12–16 March...
IEEE Spectrum
The British Navy Resisted a Decent Lightning Rod for Decades Frustrated scientists turned to visual aids to help make their case for the lightning rod. The...
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Frustrated scientists turned to visual aids to help make their case for the lightning rod. The exploding thunder house is one example. When a small amount of gunpowder was deposited inside the dollhouse-size structure and a charge was applied, the house would either explode or...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Helix Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
a week ago
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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. RoboCup German Open: 12–16 March...
IEEE Spectrum
Reinforcement Learning Triples Spot’s Running Speed About a year ago, Boston Dynamics released a research version of its Spot quadruped robot, which...
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About a year ago, Boston Dynamics released a research version of its Spot quadruped robot, which comes with a low-level application programming interface (API) that allows direct control of Spot’s joints. Even back then, the rumor was that this API unlocked some significant...
IEEE Spectrum
Saving Public Data Takes More Than Simple Snapshots Shortly after the Trump administration took office in the United States in late January, more than...
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Shortly after the Trump administration took office in the United States in late January, more than 8,000 pages across several government websites and databases were taken down, the New York Times found. Though many of these have now been restored, thousands of pages were purged...
IEEE Spectrum
Willie Hobbs Moore: STEM Trailblazer At a time in American history when even the most intelligent Black women were expected to become, at...
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At a time in American history when even the most intelligent Black women were expected to become, at most, teachers or nurses, Willie Hobbs Moore broke with societal expectations to become a noted physicist and engineer. Moore probably is best known for being the first Black...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: PARTNR Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
2 weeks ago
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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. RoboCup German Open: 12–16 March...
IEEE Spectrum
Dual-Arm HyQReal Puts Powerful Telepresence Anywhere In theory, one of the main applications for robots should be operating in environments that (for...
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In theory, one of the main applications for robots should be operating in environments that (for whatever reason) are too dangerous for humans. I say “in theory” because in practice it’s difficult to get robots to do useful stuff in semi-structured or unstructured environments...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Agile Humanoids Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
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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. RoboCup German Open: 12–16 March...
IEEE Spectrum
The Lost Story of Alan Turing’s Secret “Delilah” Project It was 8 May 1945, Victory in Europe Day. With the German military’s unconditional surrender, the...
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It was 8 May 1945, Victory in Europe Day. With the German military’s unconditional surrender, the European part of World War II came to an end. Alan Turing and his assistant Donald Bayley celebrated victory in their quiet English way, by taking a long walk together. They had been...
IEEE Spectrum
The Starting Line for Self-Driving Cars IEEE Spectrum reported at the time, it was “the motleyest assortment of vehicles assembled in one...
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IEEE Spectrum reported at the time, it was “the motleyest assortment of vehicles assembled in one place since the filming of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior.” Not a single entrant made it across the finish line. Some didn’t make it out of the parking lot. So it’s all the more...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Aibo Foster Parents Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
a month ago
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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. RoboCup German Open: 12–16 March...
IEEE Spectrum
AIs and Robots Should Sound Robotic AI-generated voices that can mimic every vocal nuance and tic of human speech, down to specific...
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AI-generated voices that can mimic every vocal nuance and tic of human speech, down to specific regional accents. And with just a few seconds of audio, AI can now clone someone’s specific voice. AI agents will make calls on our behalf, conversing with others in natural language....
IEEE Spectrum
Sony Kills Recordable Blu-Ray And Other Vintage Media Physical media fans need not panic yet—you’ll still be able to buy new Blu-Ray movies for your...
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Physical media fans need not panic yet—you’ll still be able to buy new Blu-Ray movies for your collection. But for those who like to save copies of their own data onto the discs, the remaining options just became more limited: Sony announced last week that it’s ending all...
IEEE Spectrum
Just How Many Robots Can One Person Control at Once? This article is part of our exclusive IEEE Journal Watch series in partnership with IEEE...
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This article is part of our exclusive IEEE Journal Watch series in partnership with IEEE Xplore. Swarms of autonomous robots are increasingly being tested and deployed in complex missions, yet a certain level of human oversight during these missions is still required. Which means...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Hottest On The Ice Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
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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. RoboCup German Open: 12–16 March...
IEEE Spectrum
A Spy Satellite You’ve Never Heard of Helped Win the Cold War In the early 1970s, the Cold War had reached a particularly frigid moment, and U.S. military and...
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In the early 1970s, the Cold War had reached a particularly frigid moment, and U.S. military and intelligence officials had a problem. The Soviet Navy was becoming a global maritime threat—and the United States did not have a global ocean-surveillance capability. Adding to the...
IEEE Spectrum
Robot Gets Up Close to the Seabed Without Disturbing It Seabed observation plays a major role in safeguarding marine systems by keeping tabs on the species...
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Seabed observation plays a major role in safeguarding marine systems by keeping tabs on the species and habitats on the ocean floor at different depths. This is primarily done by underwater robots that use optical imaging to collect high quality data that can be fed into...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Agile Upgrade Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
a month ago
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a month ago
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. RoboCup German Open: 12–16 March...
IEEE Spectrum
How Antivirus Software Has Changed With the Internet We live in a world filled with computer viruses, and antivirus software is almost as old as the...
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We live in a world filled with computer viruses, and antivirus software is almost as old as the Internet itself: The first version of what would become McAfee antivirus came out in 1987—just four years after the Internet booted up. For many of us, antivirus software is an...
IEEE Spectrum
Asimov's Laws of Robotics Need an Update for AI In 1942, the legendary science fiction author Isaac Asimov introduced his Three Laws of Robotics in...
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In 1942, the legendary science fiction author Isaac Asimov introduced his Three Laws of Robotics in his short story “Runaround.” The laws were later popularized in his seminal story collection I, Robot. First Law: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Arms on Vacuums Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
a month ago
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a month ago
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. RoboCup German Open: 12–16 March...
IEEE Spectrum
This Pool Robot Is the First With Ultrasonic Mapping Back in the day, the defining characteristic of home-cleaning robots was that they’d randomly bounce...
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Back in the day, the defining characteristic of home-cleaning robots was that they’d randomly bounce around your floor as part of their cleaning process, because the technology required to localize and map an area hadn’t yet trickled down into the consumer space. That all changed...
IEEE Spectrum
Tragedy Spurred the First Effective Land-Mine Detector Land mines have been around in one form or another for more than a thousand years. By now, you’d...
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Land mines have been around in one form or another for more than a thousand years. By now, you’d think a simple and safe way of locating and removing the devices would’ve been engineered. But that’s not the case. In fact, up until World War II, the most common method for finding...
IEEE Spectrum
Ensuring the Security and Resilience of Autonomous Fleets with Advanced Testing Frameworks Autonomous systems, particularly fleets of drones and other unmanned vehicles, face increasing risks...
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Autonomous systems, particularly fleets of drones and other unmanned vehicles, face increasing risks as their complexity grows. Despite advancements, existing testing frameworks fall short in addressing end-to-end security, resilience, and safety in zero-trust environments. The...
IEEE Spectrum
SwitchBot Introduces Modular Mobile Home Robot Earlier this year, we reviewed the SwitchBot S10, a vacuuming and wet mopping robot that uses a...
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Earlier this year, we reviewed the SwitchBot S10, a vacuuming and wet mopping robot that uses a water-integrated docking system to autonomously manage both clean and dirty water for you. It’s a pretty clever solution, and we appreciated that SwitchBot was willing to try something...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Sleepy Robot Baby Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
2 months ago
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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. RoboCup German Open: 12–16 March...
IEEE Spectrum
In 2025, People Will Try Living in This Underwater Habitat The future of human habitation in the sea is taking shape in an abandoned quarry on the border of...
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The future of human habitation in the sea is taking shape in an abandoned quarry on the border of Wales and England. There, the ocean-exploration organization Deep has embarked on a multiyear quest to enable scientists to live on the seafloor at depths up to 200 meters for weeks,...
IEEE Spectrum
The Top 7 Robotics Stories of 2024 2024 was the best year ever for robotics, which I’m pretty sure is not something that I’ve ever said...
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2024 was the best year ever for robotics, which I’m pretty sure is not something that I’ve ever said before. But that’s the great thing about robotics—it’s always new, and it’s always exciting. What may be different about this year is the real sense that not only is AI going to...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Unitree Talent Awakening Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
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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. ICRA 2025: 19–23 May 2025, ATLANTA,...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Happy Holidays! Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
2 months ago
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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. ICRA 2025: 19–23 May 2025, ATLANTA,...
IEEE Spectrum
How Amazon Is Changing the Future of Robotics and Logistics This is a sponsored article brought to you by Amazon. “Innovation doesn’t just happen because you...
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This is a sponsored article brought to you by Amazon. “Innovation doesn’t just happen because you have a good idea,” said Valerie Samzun, a leader in Amazon’s Fulfillment Technologies and Robotics (FTR) division. “It happens because you have the right team, the right...
IEEE Spectrum
Unlock the Power of Agile for Hardware Teams The Modified Agile for Hardware Development (MAHD) Framework is the ultimate solution for hardware...
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The Modified Agile for Hardware Development (MAHD) Framework is the ultimate solution for hardware teams seeking the benefits of Agile without the pitfalls of applying software-centric methods. Traditional development approaches, like waterfall, often result in delayed timelines,...
IEEE Spectrum
Jean Sammet: An Accidental Computer Programmer Jean Sammet rarely let anything get in the way of her professional goals. As a young student, she...
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Jean Sammet rarely let anything get in the way of her professional goals. As a young student, she was barred from attending prestigious all-boys schools, so she pursued her love of mathematics at the best institutions she could find that were open to girls and women. Following...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Mars Chopper Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
2 months ago
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2 months ago
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. ICRA 2025: 19–23 May 2025, ATLANTA,...
IEEE Spectrum
When IBM Built a War Room for Executives Computer History Museum’s collection has a biography of sorts—a life before CHM, a tale about how it...
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Computer History Museum’s collection has a biography of sorts—a life before CHM, a tale about how it came to us, and a life within the museum. The chapters of that biography include the uses made of it, and the historical and interpretive stories it can be made to tell. This then...
IEEE Spectrum
Fish-Inspired Sensor "Touches" Using Electric Fields The ability to detect a nearby presence without seeing or touching it may sound fantastical—but it’s...
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The ability to detect a nearby presence without seeing or touching it may sound fantastical—but it’s a real ability that some creatures have. A family of African fish known as Mormyrids are weakly electric, and have special organs that can locate a nearby prey, whether it’s in...
IEEE Spectrum
Zen and the Art of Aibo Engineering Sony’s team made that happen. And since Aibo’s debut, the company has sold more than 170,000 of...
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Sony’s team made that happen. And since Aibo’s debut, the company has sold more than 170,000 of the cute little quadrupeds—a huge number considering their price of several thousand dollars each. From the start, Aibo could express a range of simulated emotions and learn through...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Multiple MagicBots Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
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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. Humanoids Summit: 11–12 December...
IEEE Spectrum
Drones with Legs Can Walk, Hop, and Jump into the Air “Whenever I encountered crows on the EPFL campus, I would observe how they walked, hopped over or...
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“Whenever I encountered crows on the EPFL campus, I would observe how they walked, hopped over or jumped on obstacles, and jumped for take-offs,” says Won Dong Shin, a doctoral student at EPFL’s Laboratory of Intelligent Systems. “What I consistently observed was that they always...
IEEE Spectrum
Chuck E. Cheese’s Animatronics Band Bows Out That may have been the last time I entered a Chuck E. Cheese pizzeria. And yet, when I heard that...
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That may have been the last time I entered a Chuck E. Cheese pizzeria. And yet, when I heard that the company was phasing out the animatronic bands from all but five locations by the end of this year, I felt a twinge of nostalgia. Much to my surprise, I was truly sad that the...
IEEE Spectrum
5 Questions for Robotics Legend Ruzena Bajcsy Ruzena Bajcsy is one of the founders of the modern field of robotics. With an education in...
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Ruzena Bajcsy is one of the founders of the modern field of robotics. With an education in electrical engineering in Slovakia, followed by a Ph.D. at Stanford, Bajcsy was the first woman to join the engineering faculty at the University of Pennsylvania. She was the first, she...
IEEE Spectrum
The Forgotten Story of How IBM Invented the Automated Fab In 1970, Bill Harding envisioned a fully automated wafer-fabrication line that would produce...
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In 1970, Bill Harding envisioned a fully automated wafer-fabrication line that would produce integrated circuits in less than one day. Not only was such a goal gutsy 54 years ago, it would be bold even in today’s billion-dollar fabs, where the fabrication time of an advanced IC...
IEEE Spectrum
Robot Photographer Takes the Perfect Picture Finding it hard to get the perfect angle for your shot? PhotoBot can take the picture for you. Tell...
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Finding it hard to get the perfect angle for your shot? PhotoBot can take the picture for you. Tell it what you want the photo to look like, and your robot photographer will present you with references to mimic. Pick your favorite, and PhotoBot—a robot arm with a camera—will...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Cobot Proxie Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
3 months ago
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3 months ago
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. Humanoids Summit: 11–12 December...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Extreme Off-Road Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
3 months ago
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3 months ago
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. Humanoids 2024: 22–24 November...
IEEE Spectrum
The First Virtual Meeting Was in 1916 At 8:30 p.m. on 16 May 1916, John J. Carty banged his gavel at the Engineering Societies Building in...
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At 8:30 p.m. on 16 May 1916, John J. Carty banged his gavel at the Engineering Societies Building in New York City to call to order a meeting of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. This was no ordinary gathering. The AIEE had decided to conduct a live national meeting...
IEEE Spectrum
Where’s My Robot? See the interactive version of this story on our site →
3 months ago
IEEE Spectrum
This Mobile 3D Printer Can Print Directly on Your Floor Waiting for each part of a 3D-printed project to finish, taking it out of the printer, and then...
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Waiting for each part of a 3D-printed project to finish, taking it out of the printer, and then installing it on location can be tedious for multi-part projects. What if there was a way for your printer to print its creation exactly where you needed it? That’s the promise of...
IEEE Spectrum
It's Surprisingly Easy to Jailbreak LLM-Driven Robots large language models (LLMs) have exploded in popularity, leading a number of companies to explore...
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large language models (LLMs) have exploded in popularity, leading a number of companies to explore LLM-driven robots. However, a new study now reveals an automated way to hack into such machines with 100 percent success. By circumventing safety guardrails, researchers could...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Robot Dog Handstand Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
3 months ago
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3 months ago
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. Humanoids 2024: 22–24 November...
IEEE Spectrum
Boston Dynamics’ Latest Vids Show Atlas Going Hands On Boston Dynamics is the master of dropping amazing robot videos with no warning, and last week, we...
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Boston Dynamics is the master of dropping amazing robot videos with no warning, and last week, we got a surprise look at the new electric Atlas going “hands on” with a practical factory task. This video is notable because it’s the first real look we’ve had at the new Atlas doing...
IEEE Spectrum
Touchscreens Are Out, and Tactile Controls Are Back Tactile controls are back in vogue. Apple added two new buttons to the iPhone 16, home appliances...
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Tactile controls are back in vogue. Apple added two new buttons to the iPhone 16, home appliances like stoves and washing machines are returning to knobs, and several car manufacturers are reintroducing buttons and dials to dashboards and steering wheels. With this...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Trick or Treat, Atlas Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
4 months ago
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4 months ago
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. Humanoids 2024: 22–24 November...
IEEE Spectrum
Why the Art of Invention Is Always Being Reinvented Every invention begins with a problem—and the creative act of seeing a problem where others might...
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Every invention begins with a problem—and the creative act of seeing a problem where others might just see unchangeable reality. For one 5-year-old, the problem was simple: She liked to have her tummy rubbed as she fell asleep. But her mom, exhausted from working two jobs, often...
IEEE Spectrum
The Unlikely Inventor of the Automatic Rice Cooker How the automatic rice cooker was invented It isn’t often that housewives get credit in the annals...
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How the automatic rice cooker was invented It isn’t often that housewives get credit in the annals of invention, but in the story of the automatic rice cooker, a woman takes center stage. That happened only after the first attempts at electrifying rice cooking, starting in the...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Swiss-Mile Robot vs. Humans Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
4 months ago
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4 months ago
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. Humanoids 2024: 22–24 November...
IEEE Spectrum
This Inventor Is Molding Tomorrow’s Inventors This article is part of our special report, “Reinventing Invention: Stories from Innovation’s...
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This article is part of our special report, “Reinventing Invention: Stories from Innovation’s Edge.” Marina Umaschi Bers has long been at the forefront of technological innovation for kids. In the 2010s, while teaching at Tufts University, in Massachusetts, she codeveloped the...
IEEE Spectrum
This Engineer Became a Star in Technology Publishing Donald Christiansen, who transformed IEEE Spectrum from a promising but erratic technology magazine...
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Donald Christiansen, who transformed IEEE Spectrum from a promising but erratic technology magazine into a repeat National Magazine Award winner, died on 2 October 2024, at the age of 97, in Huntington, N.Y. served aboard the aircraft carrier San Jacinto, an experience that led...
IEEE Spectrum
Why Simone Giertz, the Queen of Useless Robots, Got Serious On YouTube she demonstrated a hilarious series of self-built mechanized devices that worked...
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On YouTube she demonstrated a hilarious series of self-built mechanized devices that worked perfectly for ridiculous applications, such as a headboard-mounted alarm clock with a rubber hand to slap the user awake. This article is part of our special report, “Reinventing...
IEEE Spectrum
Remote Sub Sustains Science Kilometers Underwater The water column is hazy as an unusual remotely operated vehicle glides over the seafloor in search...
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The water column is hazy as an unusual remotely operated vehicle glides over the seafloor in search of a delicate tilt meter deployed three years ago off the west side of Vancouver Island. The sensor measures shaking and shifting in continental plates that will eventually unleash...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Mobile Robot Upgrades Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
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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. ROSCon 2024: 21–23 October 2024,...
IEEE Spectrum
Boston Dynamics and Toyota Research Team Up on Robots Today, Boston Dynamics and the Toyota Research Institute (TRI) announced a new partnership “to...
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Today, Boston Dynamics and the Toyota Research Institute (TRI) announced a new partnership “to accelerate the development of general-purpose humanoid robots utilizing TRI’s Large Behavior Models and Boston Dynamics’ Atlas robot.” Committing to working towards a general purpose...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Reachy 2 IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few...
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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. IROS 2024: 14–18 October 2024, ABU DHABI, UAE ICSR 2024: 23–26 October 2024, ODENSE, DENMARK Cybathlon 2024: 25–27 October 2024,...
IEEE Spectrum
How a Robot Is Grabbing Fuel From a Fukushima Reactor Thirteen years since a massive earthquake and tsunami struck the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power...
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Thirteen years since a massive earthquake and tsunami struck the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in northern Japan, causing a loss of power, meltdowns and a major release of radioactive material, operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) finally seems to be close to...
IEEE Spectrum
SwitchBot S10 Review​: “This Is the Future of Home Robots” I’ve been reviewing robot vacuums for more than a decade, and robot mops for just as long. It’s been...
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I’ve been reviewing robot vacuums for more than a decade, and robot mops for just as long. It’s been astonishing how the technology has evolved, from the original iRobot Roomba bouncing off of walls and furniture to robots that use lidar and vision to map your entire house and...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: Quadruped Ladder Climbing Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
5 months ago
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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. IROS 2024: 14–18 October 2024, ABU...
IEEE Spectrum
The Incredible Story Behind the First Transistor Radio But that’s pretty much what Pat Haggerty, vice president of Texas Instruments, did in 1954. The...
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But that’s pretty much what Pat Haggerty, vice president of Texas Instruments, did in 1954. The result was the Regency TR-1, the world’s first commercial transistor radio, which debuted 70 years ago this month. The engineers delivered on Haggerty’s audacious goal, and I...
IEEE Spectrum
Video Friday: ICRA Turns 40 Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE...
5 months ago
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5 months ago
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. IROS 2024: 14–18 October 2024, ABU...
IEEE Spectrum
Detachable Robotic Hand Crawls Around on Finger-Legs When we think of grasping robots, we think of manipulators of some sort on the ends of arms of some...
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5 months ago
When we think of grasping robots, we think of manipulators of some sort on the ends of arms of some sort. Because of course we do—that’s how (most of us) are built, and that’s the mindset with which we have consequently optimized the world around us. But one of the great things...
IEEE Spectrum
Forums, Competitions, Challenges: Inspiring Creativity in Robotics This is a sponsored article brought to you by Khalifa University of Science and Technology. A total...
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This is a sponsored article brought to you by Khalifa University of Science and Technology. A total of eight intense competitions to inspire creativity and innovation along with 13 forums dedicated to diverse segments of robotics and artificial intelligence will be part of the...
IEEE Spectrum
What It Takes To Let People Play With the Past Media Archaeology Lab is one of the largest public collections in the world of obsolete, yet...
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5 months ago
Media Archaeology Lab is one of the largest public collections in the world of obsolete, yet functional, technology. Located on the University of Colorado Boulder campus, the MAL is where you can watch a magic lantern show, play Star Castle on a Vectrex games console, or check...
IEEE Spectrum
In 1926, TV Was Mechanical John Logie Baird had a lot of ingenious ideas, not all of which caught on. His phonovision was an...
5 months ago
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5 months ago
John Logie Baird had a lot of ingenious ideas, not all of which caught on. His phonovision was an early attempt at video recording, with the signals preserved on phonograph records. His noctovision used infrared light to see objects in the dark, which some experts claim was a...
IEEE Spectrum
From Punch Cards to Python In today’s digital world, it’s easy for just about anyone to create a mobile app or write software,...
5 months ago
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5 months ago
In today’s digital world, it’s easy for just about anyone to create a mobile app or write software, thanks to Java, JavaScript, Python, and other programming languages. But that wasn’t always the case. Because the primary language of computers is binary code, early programmers...
IEEE Spectrum
How the Designer of the First Hydrogen Bomb Got the Gig Richard Garwin is one of the most decorated and successful engineers of the 20th century. The IEEE...
6 months ago
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6 months ago
Richard Garwin is one of the most decorated and successful engineers of the 20th century. The IEEE Life Fellow has won the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Science, France’s La Grande Médaille de l’Académie des Sciences, and is one of just a handful of people...
IEEE Spectrum
The Saga of AD-X2, the Battery Additive That Roiled the NBS Senate hearings, a post office ban, the resignation of the director of the National Bureau of...
7 months ago
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7 months ago
Senate hearings, a post office ban, the resignation of the director of the National Bureau of Standards, and his reinstatement after more than 400 scientists threatened to resign. Who knew a little box of salt could stir up such drama? What was AD-X2? It all started in 1947 when...
IEEE Spectrum
The Rise of Groupware A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, Ernie Smith’s newsletter, which hunts for the...
7 months ago
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7 months ago
A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, Ernie Smith’s newsletter, which hunts for the end of the long tail. These days, computer users take collaboration software for granted. Google Docs, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Salesforce, and so on, are such a big part of many...
IEEE Spectrum
Inside the Three-Way Race to Create the Most Widely Used Laser The semiconductor laser, invented more than 60 years ago, is the foundation of many of today’s...
7 months ago
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7 months ago
The semiconductor laser, invented more than 60 years ago, is the foundation of many of today’s technologies including barcode scanners, fiber-optic communications, medical imaging, and remote controls. The tiny, versatile device is now an IEEE Milestone. The possibilities of...
IEEE Spectrum
Edith Clarke: Architect of Modern Power Distribution Edith Clarke was a powerhouse in practically every sense of the word. From the start of her career...
7 months ago
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7 months ago
Edith Clarke was a powerhouse in practically every sense of the word. From the start of her career at General Electric in 1922, she was determined to develop stable, more reliable power grids. During her first years at GE she invented what came to be known as the Clarke...
IEEE Spectrum
This Wearable Computer Made a Fashion Statement Google Glass debuted, the artist Lisa Krohn designed a prototype wearable computer that looked like...
8 months ago
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8 months ago
Google Glass debuted, the artist Lisa Krohn designed a prototype wearable computer that looked like no other. The Cyberdesk was an experiment in augmented reality. At a time when computers were mostly beige and boxy, Krohn envisioned a pliable, high-tech garment that fused...
IEEE Spectrum
How Vannevar Bush Engineered the 20th Century In the summer of 1945, Robert J. Oppenheimer and other key members of the Manhattan Project gathered...
8 months ago
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8 months ago
In the summer of 1945, Robert J. Oppenheimer and other key members of the Manhattan Project gathered in New Mexico to witness the first atomic bomb test. Among the observers was Vannevar Bush, who had overseen the Manhattan Project and served as the sole liaison to U.S. President...
IEEE Spectrum
Lord Kelvin and His Analog Computer William Thomson, mourning the death of his wife and flush with cash from various patents related to...
9 months ago
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9 months ago
William Thomson, mourning the death of his wife and flush with cash from various patents related to the laying of the first transatlantic telegraph cable, decided to buy a yacht. His schooner, the Lalla Rookh, became Thomson’s summer home and his base for hosting scientific...
IEEE Spectrum
The Forgotten History of Chinese Keyboards Today, typing in Chinese works by converting QWERTY keystrokes into Chinese characters via a...
9 months ago
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9 months ago
Today, typing in Chinese works by converting QWERTY keystrokes into Chinese characters via a software interface, known as an input method editor. But this was not always the case. Thomas S. Mullaney’s new book, The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age,...
IEEE Spectrum
The Sneaky Standard A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, Ernie Smith’s newsletter, which hunts for the...
9 months ago
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9 months ago
A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, Ernie Smith’s newsletter, which hunts for the end of the long tail. Personal computing has changed a lot in the past four decades, and one of the biggest changes, perhaps the most unheralded, comes down to compatibility. These...
IEEE Spectrum
A Brief History of the World’s First Planetarium In 1912, Oskar von Miller, an electrical engineer and founder of the Deutsches Museum, had an idea:...
10 months ago
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10 months ago
In 1912, Oskar von Miller, an electrical engineer and founder of the Deutsches Museum, had an idea: Could you project an artificial starry sky onto a dome, as a way of demonstrating astronomical principles to the public? It was such a novel concept that when von Miller approached...
IEEE Spectrum
Robert Kahn: The Great Interconnector In the mid-1960s, Robert Kahn began thinking about how computers with different operating systems...
10 months ago
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10 months ago
In the mid-1960s, Robert Kahn began thinking about how computers with different operating systems could talk to each other across a network. He didn’t think much about what they would say to one another, though. He was a theoretical guy, on leave from the faculty of the...
IEEE Spectrum
50 Years Later, This Apollo-Era Antenna Still Talks to Voyager 2 For more than 50 years, Deep Space Station 43 has been an invaluable tool for space probes as they...
10 months ago
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10 months ago
For more than 50 years, Deep Space Station 43 has been an invaluable tool for space probes as they explore our solar system and push into the beyond. The DSS-43 radio antenna, located at the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex, near Canberra, Australia, keeps open the line...
IEEE Spectrum
How Engineers at Digital Equipment Corp. Saved Ethernet I’ve enjoyed reading magazine articles about Ethernet’s 50th anniversary, including one in the The...
11 months ago
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11 months ago
I’ve enjoyed reading magazine articles about Ethernet’s 50th anniversary, including one in the The Institute. Invented by computer scientists Robert Metcalfe and David Boggs, Ethernet has been extraordinarily impactful. Metcalfe, an IEEE Fellow, received the 1996 IEEE Medal of...
IEEE Spectrum
The Rise and Fall of 3M’s Floppy Disk A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, Ernie Smith’s newsletter, which hunts for the...
11 months ago
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11 months ago
A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, Ernie Smith’s newsletter, which hunts for the end of the long tail. if you look on 3M’s own website, you will see no mention of this legacy—it’s a firm that sells abrasive materials, adhesive tapes, filters, films, personal...
IEEE Spectrum
Why L. Ron Hubbard Patented His E-Meter zombie mysteries, historical fiction, pirate adventure tales, and westerns. science fiction. The...
11 months ago
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11 months ago
zombie mysteries, historical fiction, pirate adventure tales, and westerns. science fiction. The publishers of Astounding Science Fiction approached Hubbard to write stories that focused on people, rather than robots and machines. His first story, “The Dangerous Dimension,” was...
IEEE Spectrum
The Story Behind Pixar’s RenderMan CGI Software Watching movies and TV series that use digital visual effects to create fantastical worlds lets...
11 months ago
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11 months ago
Watching movies and TV series that use digital visual effects to create fantastical worlds lets people escape reality for a few hours. Thanks to advancements in computer-generated technology used to produce films and shows, those worlds are highly realistic. In many cases, it can...
IEEE Spectrum
Sci-fi and Hi-fi Many a technologist has been inspired by science fiction. Some have even built, or rebuilt, entire...
a year ago
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a year ago
Many a technologist has been inspired by science fiction. Some have even built, or rebuilt, entire companies around an idea introduced in a story they read, as the founders of Second Life and Meta did, working from the metaverse as imagined by Neal Stephenson in his seminal 1992...
IEEE Spectrum
This Clock Made Power Grids Possible On 23 October 1916, an engineer named Henry E. Warren quietly revolutionized power transmission by...
a year ago
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a year ago
On 23 October 1916, an engineer named Henry E. Warren quietly revolutionized power transmission by installing an electric clock in the L Street generating station of Boston’s Edison Electric Illuminating Co. This master station clock kept a very particular type of time: It used a...
IEEE Spectrum
What If the Worst AI Fear Is AI Fear Itself? It’s been just about a year now—a nonprofit called the Future of Life Institute posted an open...
a year ago
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a year ago
It’s been just about a year now—a nonprofit called the Future of Life Institute posted an open letter reflecting people’s darkest fears about artificial intelligence. “Contemporary AI systems are now becoming human-competitive at general tasks,” it said. It called for a pause in...
IEEE Spectrum
100 Years Ago, IBM Was Born Happy birthday, IBM! You’re 100 years old! Or are you? It’s true that the businesses that formed IBM...
a year ago
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a year ago
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...
IEEE Spectrum
What Is an Electronic Sackbut? If you, like me, think of musical synthesizers as an artifact of 1970s rock and disco, then you,...
a year ago
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a year ago
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...
IEEE Spectrum
The Battle for Better, Broader, More Inclusive AI AI’s inclusivity problem is no secret. According to the ACLU, AI systems can perpetuate housing...
a year ago
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a year ago
AI’s inclusivity problem is no secret. According to the ACLU, AI systems can perpetuate housing discrimination and bias in the justice system, among other harms. Bias in the data an AI model relies on is reproduced in its results. Large Language Models (LLMs) share this problem;...
IEEE Spectrum
The Man Who Coined The Word "Robot" Defends Himself You’re familiar with Karel Čapek, right? If not, you should be—he’s the guy who (along with his...
a year ago
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a year ago
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...
IEEE Spectrum
How Tech Automated the January 6 Investigations Josh Coker’s Facebook page doesn’t show any MAGA memes or Trump quotes. He wasn’t live-streaming on...
a year ago
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a year ago
Josh Coker’s Facebook page doesn’t show any MAGA memes or Trump quotes. He wasn’t live-streaming on 6 January 2021, and no one has ever stepped forward to identify him as one of the mob that stormed the US Capitol that day. Oregon, Ohio, with five counts connected to the failed...
IEEE Spectrum
The Cheesy Charm of the Clapper “Clap on! Clap off! Clap on! Clap off! The Clapper!” This 1980s earworm of a jingle touted a gadget...
a year ago
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a year ago
“Clap on! Clap off! Clap on! Clap off! The Clapper!” This 1980s earworm of a jingle touted a gadget to turn your lights, your TV, or any other electrical device on or off with the clap of your hands. If you watched any amount of American television back then, you probably saw the...
IEEE Spectrum
35 Years Ago, Researchers Used Brain Waves to Control a Robot Using the brain to directly control an object was long the stuff of science fiction, and in 1988 the...
a year ago
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a year ago
Using the brain to directly control an object was long the stuff of science fiction, and in 1988 the vision became a reality. IEEE Life Senior Member Stevo Bozinovski and Members Mihail Sestakov and Dr. Liljana Bozinovska used a student volunteer’s electroencephalogram (EEG)...
IEEE Spectrum
Fakes: Not an Internet Thing, a Human Thing Every day, as the Internet becomes more indispensable to modern life, the drawbacks of deep...
a year ago
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a year ago
Every day, as the Internet becomes more indispensable to modern life, the drawbacks of deep engagement with the virtual realm capture as much attention as the wide-ranging benefits. On the Internet, of course, anyone can in all too many forums pretty much say anything—regardless...
IEEE Spectrum
Why Are We Still Doing What Simon Says? In 1976, Ralph Baer and Howard Morrison, two game designers, happened to see a trade show...
a year ago
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a year ago
In 1976, Ralph Baer and Howard Morrison, two game designers, happened to see a trade show demonstration of an Atari arcade game called Touch Me. The game’s waist-high cabinet featured four large buttons on the top, which lit up in random sequence; the player had to push the...
IEEE Spectrum
Ethernet is Still Going Strong After 50 Years The Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in California has spawned many pioneering computer technologies...
a year ago
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a year ago
The Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in California has spawned many pioneering computer technologies including the Alto—the first personal computer to use a graphical user interface—and the first laser printer. The PARC facility also is known for the invention of Ethernet, a...
IEEE Spectrum
Lewis H. Latimer: A Life of Lightbulb Moments James Weldon Johnson’s hymn “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” adopted by African Americans as the...
a year ago
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a year ago
James Weldon Johnson’s hymn “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” adopted by African Americans as the unofficial “Negro National Anthem,” includes the line, “We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,” which sums up how Black Americans have found ways to thrive under...
IEEE Spectrum
A Brief History of the Office Cubicle Robert Propst, a designer at the Herman Miller furniture company. Four years earlier, he had...
a year ago
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a year ago
Robert Propst, a designer at the Herman Miller furniture company. Four years earlier, he had proposed a radical alternative to the office bullpen: the Action Office. He envisioned it as a holistic and integrated system designed to increase worker efficiency while providing an...
IEEE Spectrum
The Marimba Virtuoso’s Desktop Planetarium The United States was at the time approaching “peak space.” The previous year, cosmonaut Yuri...
a year ago
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a year ago
The United States was at the time approaching “peak space.” The previous year, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had become the first human to reach outer space, and on 12 September 1962 President Kennedy would announce the United States’ intention to put a man on the moon before the...
IEEE Spectrum
Taking the Measure of the Earthquake That Destroyed Tokyo At 11:58 am on Saturday, 1 September 1923, the Kanto region of Japan started to shake. The...
a year ago
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a year ago
At 11:58 am on Saturday, 1 September 1923, the Kanto region of Japan started to shake. The earthquake began with a violent horizontal back-and-forth motion, followed by two vertical jolts, and then another horizontal shock even stronger than the first. The intensity of the tremor...
IEEE Spectrum
Granville T. Woods: Smartest Guy in the Room Any home baker will confirm that, even if you have all the right ingredients and follow the recipe,...
a year ago
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a year ago
Any home baker will confirm that, even if you have all the right ingredients and follow the recipe, things don’t always turn out the way you envisioned. Such was the life of inventor extraordinaire Granville T. Woods. Who was Granville T. Woods? Woods was endowed with...
IEEE Spectrum
Assistive Tech at the End of Sight Seeing his words on the printed page is a big deal to Andrew Leland—as it is to all writers. But the...
a year ago
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a year ago
Seeing his words on the printed page is a big deal to Andrew Leland—as it is to all writers. But the sight of his thoughts in written form is much more precious to him than to most scribes. Leland is gradually losing his vision due to a congenital condition called retinitis...
IEEE Spectrum
The Cold War Arms Race Over Prosthetic Arms In 1961, Norbert Wiener, the father of cybernetics, broke his hip and wound up in Massachusetts...
a year ago
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a year ago
In 1961, Norbert Wiener, the father of cybernetics, broke his hip and wound up in Massachusetts General Hospital. Wiener’s bad luck turned into fruitful conversations with his orthopedic surgeon, Melvin Glimcher. Those talks in turn led to a collaboration and an invention: the...
IEEE Spectrum
Who Really Invented the Rechargeable Lithium-Ion Battery? Fifty years after the birth of the rechargeable lithium-ion battery, it’s easy to see its value....
a year ago
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a year ago
Fifty years after the birth of the rechargeable lithium-ion battery, it’s easy to see its value. It’s used in billions of laptops, cellphones, power tools, and cars. Global sales top US $45 billion a year, on their way to more than $100 billion in the coming decade. The first...
IEEE Spectrum
Franklin’s Franklins Were Freakishly Un-Fakeable To make something hard to fake, you can use exotic materials or clever tricks. Benjamin Franklin, a...
a year ago
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a year ago
To make something hard to fake, you can use exotic materials or clever tricks. Benjamin Franklin, a printer by vocation, a scientist by avocation, leaned on cleverness, developing measures that are still in use. Those black arts have now yielded to the latest analytical...
IEEE Spectrum
The Invention That Let Fiber Optics Span the Globe Plenty of big stories from the year 1985 had their moment in the sun and are now all but forgotten:...
a year ago
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a year ago
Plenty of big stories from the year 1985 had their moment in the sun and are now all but forgotten: New Coke, “We Are the World,” the rise of desktop publishing. But one at-the-time obscure invention from that year has long eclipsed the frothy headlines of its time, because it...
IEEE Spectrum
The Pioneer Behind Electromagnetism Without an understanding of the fundamental relationship between electricity and magnetism, it would...
a year ago
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a year ago
Without an understanding of the fundamental relationship between electricity and magnetism, it would not have been possible to invent motors, telecommunications equipment, kitchen appliances and more. A key part of our understanding of that relationship, known as classical...
IEEE Spectrum
Designing the First Apple Macintosh: The Engineers’ Story In 1979 the Macintosh personal computer existed only as the pet idea of Jef Raskin, a veteran of the...
a year ago
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a year ago
In 1979 the Macintosh personal computer existed only as the pet idea of Jef Raskin, a veteran of the Apple II team, who had proposed that Apple Computer Inc. make a low-cost “appliance”-type computer that would be as easy to use as a toaster. Mr. Raskin believed the computer he...
IEEE Spectrum
This 1920 Chess Automaton Was Wired to Win The Mechanical Turk was a fraud. The chess-playing automaton, dressed in a turban and elaborate...
a year ago
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a year ago
The Mechanical Turk was a fraud. The chess-playing automaton, dressed in a turban and elaborate Ottoman robes, toured Europe in the closing decades of the 18th century accompanied by its inventor Wolfgang von Kempelen. The Turk wowed Austrian empress Maria Theresa, French emperor...
IEEE Spectrum
How the Computer Graphics Industry Got Started at the University of Utah Animation has come a long way since 1900, when J. Stuart Blackton created The Enchanted Drawing, the...
a year ago
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a year ago
Animation has come a long way since 1900, when J. Stuart Blackton created The Enchanted Drawing, the earliest known animated film. The 90-second movie was created using stop-motion techniques, as flat characters, props, and backgrounds were drawn on an easel or made from...
IEEE Spectrum
Smellovision Gets a Refresh This article is part of our exclusive IEEE Journal Watch series in partnership with IEEE...
a year ago
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a year ago
This article is part of our exclusive IEEE Journal Watch series in partnership with IEEE Xplore. Modern virtual reality is a feast for the eyes and ears—but coming in a distant fourth (behind haptic touch technologies), smell has been nearly completely ignored. Earlier this...
IEEE Spectrum
James Wimshurst’s Electrostatic Immortality James Wimshurst did not invent the machine that bears his name. But thanks to his many refinements...
a year ago
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a year ago
James Wimshurst did not invent the machine that bears his name. But thanks to his many refinements to a distinctive type of electrostatic generator, we now have the Wimshurst influence machine. What does a Wimshurst machine do? Influence machines date back to the 18th century....
IEEE Spectrum
The Meeting of the Minds That Launched AI The Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, held from 18 June through 17...
a year ago
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a year ago
The Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, held from 18 June through 17 August of 1956, is widely considered the event that kicked off AI as a research discipline. Organized by John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Claude Shannon, and Nathaniel Rochester, it...
IEEE Spectrum
Xerox Donates Legendary PARC Research Center Xerox is donating its legendary research lab PARC to the nonprofit research institute SRI...
a year ago
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a year ago
Xerox is donating its legendary research lab PARC to the nonprofit research institute SRI International. The subsidiary’s pioneering research in the 1970s helped give birth to the era of personal computing. Xerox says the move will allow it to focus on its core business. The...
IEEE Spectrum
Skylab: The Space Station That Fell on Australia end cap from one of Skylab’s oxygen tanks in the dirt. Cattle were drinking collected rainwater from...
a year ago
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a year ago
end cap from one of Skylab’s oxygen tanks in the dirt. Cattle were drinking collected rainwater from the remains of a US $2.2 billion NASA investment. Skylab’s Failure and Recovery Skylab’s fate was sealed moments after lift-off when the sun shield and main solar panel were...
IEEE Spectrum
Meet Mr. Internet: Vint Cerf It was June 1973. For the past three months, Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn had been working together on a...
a year ago
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a year ago
It was June 1973. For the past three months, Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn had been working together on a problem Kahn had been pondering for some time: how to connect ground-based military computers seamlessly to communications satellites and mobile radios. The two had been...
IEEE Spectrum
The Tremendous VR and CG Systems—of the 1960s Ivan Sutherland has blazed a truly unique trail through computing over the past six decades. One of...
a year ago
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a year ago
Ivan Sutherland has blazed a truly unique trail through computing over the past six decades. One of the most influential figures in the story of computing, he helped to open new pathways for others to explore and dramatically extend: interactive computer graphics, virtual...
IEEE Spectrum
Quantum Technology’s Unsung Heroes In a world where quantum technologies are on the rise in computing, cryptography, materials,...
a year ago
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a year ago
In a world where quantum technologies are on the rise in computing, cryptography, materials, sensors, telecom, biomed, and AI, it’s easy to forget that not so long ago the words “quantum” and “technology” rarely fit comfortably into a sentence together. A range of trailblazers...
IEEE Spectrum
Tiny Exploding Houses Promoted 18th-Century Lightning Rods Imagine if engineers were required to build a working model to demonstrate every new technological...
a year ago
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a year ago
Imagine if engineers were required to build a working model to demonstrate every new technological concept to the general public. Done right, tech literacy might soar! A compelling visual example can really help people understand the applications and implications of new...
IEEE Spectrum
The Do-or-Die Moments That Determined the Fate of the Internet CES) and the Game Developers Conference have become regular features of the digital world. ARPANET...
a year ago
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a year ago
CES) and the Game Developers Conference have become regular features of the digital world. ARPANET in 1972, or the mid-1980s conferences now known as Interop, alerted experts to new technologies, and, in some cases, altered the balance between competing approaches. Packet...
IEEE Spectrum
False Starts: The Story of Vehicle-to-Grid Power In 2001, a team of engineers at a then-obscure R&D company called AC Propulsion quietly began a...
a year ago
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a year ago
In 2001, a team of engineers at a then-obscure R&D company called AC Propulsion quietly began a groundbreaking experiment. They wanted to see whether an electric vehicle could feed electricity back to the grid. The experiment seemed to prove the feasibility of the technology. The...
IEEE Spectrum
Smalltalk Blew Steve Jobs’s Mind Late in 1979, Steve Jobs and other colleagues from Apple visited the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
Late in 1979, Steve Jobs and other colleagues from Apple visited the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). There they were introduced to the experimental Alto computer and the Smalltalk language and computing environment, developed by Alan Kay’s Learning Research Group....
IEEE Spectrum
50 Years Later, We’re Still Living in the Xerox Alto’s World I’m sitting in front of a computer, looking at its graphical user interface with overlapping windows...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
I’m sitting in front of a computer, looking at its graphical user interface with overlapping windows on a high-resolution screen. I interact with the computer by pointing and clicking with a mouse and typing on a keyboard. I’m using a word processor with the core features and...
IEEE Spectrum
Saving the Big Bang (Antenna) The antenna that discovered a cosmic microwave background coming from all directions in...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
The antenna that discovered a cosmic microwave background coming from all directions in space—cementing the theory that the universe was created in a big bang—now stares down its own topsy-turvy future. Its owner says the hardware will be preserved, but the fate of the historical...
IEEE Spectrum
RCA’s Lucite Phantom Teleceiver Introduced the Idea of TV addressed a small crowd outside the RCA pavilion at the New York World’s Fair. “Today we are on the...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
addressed a small crowd outside the RCA pavilion at the New York World’s Fair. “Today we are on the eve of launching a new industry, based on imagination, on scientific research and accomplishment,” he proclaimed. That industry was television. RCA president David Sarnoff’s...
IEEE Spectrum
The Costly Impact of Non-Strategic Patents The five largest auto manufacturers will face massive U.S. patent fees within the next five years....
over a year ago
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over a year ago
The five largest auto manufacturers will face massive U.S. patent fees within the next five years. This report examines auto industry lapse trends and how a company’s decisions on keeping, selling or pruning patents can greatly impact its cost savings and revenue generation...
IEEE Spectrum
The Lisa Was Apple’s Best Failure Happy 40th Birthday to Lisa! The Apple Lisa computer, that is. In celebration of this milestone, the...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
Happy 40th Birthday to Lisa! The Apple Lisa computer, that is. In celebration of this milestone, the Computer History Museum has received permission from Apple to release the source code to the Lisa, including its system and applications software. You can access the Lisa source...
IEEE Spectrum
How This Record Company Engineer Invented the CT Scanner The inspiration for computed tomography (CT) came from a chance conversation that research engineer...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
The inspiration for computed tomography (CT) came from a chance conversation that research engineer Godfrey Hounsfield had with a doctor while on vacation in the 1960s. The physician complained that X-ray images of the brain were too grainy and only two-dimensional. Hounsfield...