Mechanical Engineering

A new way to fly, built up from the nanoscale

Super-thin “nanocardboard” can levitate using only the power of light, opening the door to tiny flying machines with no moving parts.

For Philly Tech Week, a showcase for cutting-edge robots

Penn students, faculty, and affiliated entrepreneurs showed off their latest legged robots, drones, automated driving systems, and more at the Pennovation Center as part of the annual celebration of the tech industry in Philadelphia.

At Weiss Tech House, a race from idea to prototype in one semester

The student-run incubator hosted its first hardware accelerator this spring, offering cash, mentoring, and access to specialized equipment to four teams.

The microbots are on their way

Marc Miskin of the School of Engineering and Applied Science spoke about his cell-sized microbots, which may one day be used for a variety of purposes ranging from measuring brain networks to cleaning cellphone batteries.

Applying machine learning to materials science

Machine learning and artificial intelligence are applied to an increasing number of tasks, But using machine learning in materials science, which attempts to design and make materials for use in future technologies, has proven to be more difficult.

Not ‘a snowball’s chance in you-know-where’: The $1.2 billion King of Prussia rail line is a longshot

Vukan Vuchic of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences said the probability of advancing a King of Prussia train line proposal “strongly depends on who controls the U.S. House and Senate. I think elections next year will be drastically important.”

‘Metallic wood’ has the strength of titanium and the density of water

In a study published in Nature Scientific Reports, researchers at the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and the University of Cambridge have built a sheet of nickel with nanoscale pores that make it as strong as titanium, but four to five times lighter.

Engineers 3D print smart objects with ‘embodied logic’

Researchers at the School of Engineering and Applied Science have taken inspiration from the sorts of systems embodied in Venus fly traps, utilizing stimuli-responsive materials and geometric principles to design structures that have “embodied logic.”

Autonomous weapons and the new laws of war

The School of Arts and Sciences’ Michael Horowitz weighed in on the downsides of requiring arms control for the use of autonomous weaponry, saying it would be “extremely hard to verify using traditional arms-control techniques.”

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