Device R&D

Innovate UK, the government’s technology investment organisation is to put £500,000 into the photonics and optoelectronics research cluster in North Wales. The aim is to encourage R&D projects that may be too risky for companies to take forward without any support, and where the majority of the project activities are carried out in North Wales. Funding for individual projects  will range from £50,000 to ...

Airbus is leading a research group looking at terahertz imaging technology and it is claiming a breakthrough which will see the imaging technology used in space observation, medical imaging, industrial automation and security screening. The work to develop a new camera that delivers high accuracy using terahertz waves with lower operating costs in part of a European Union project called ...

Researchers from the University of Glasgow claim to have found a way to make swallowable cameras which can be used for detecting cancers of the throat and gut. Tiny sensing systems small enough for patients to swallow have been used by doctors but these devices have relied on additional illumination with a separate light source and have been restricted to ...

Researchers in the US have demonstrated what is in effect an ‘optical transistor’ which can modulate light, as in optical fibre communications, at terahertz frequencies. The team at Purdue University claim that the so-called “plasmonic oxide material” could make possible devices for optical communications that are at least 10 times faster than conventional technologies. The optical material made of aluminum-doped ...

Researchers at Nottingham Trent University have come up with a way of embedding RFID chips in yarns which can then be woven or knitted to make fabrics for clothing. Professor Tilak Dias of the Advanced Textiles Research Group of the School of Art & Design, claims that the embedded chips “cannot be seen in situ by the naked eye”. He has patented ...

Scientists from The Hamlyn Centre, Imperial College London, are presenting their latest research in wearable tech at the Royal Society’s annual Summer Science Exhibition, which officially opens to the public today. The theme for the Hamlyn Centre’s exhibit is “smart sensing”, technologies for wearables devices. It will include very low power ICs and sensors, ranging from optical, impedance, and micro-fluidics. Professor Guang-Zhong ...

D-Wave Systems has put 1,000 qubits, comprising 128,000 Josephson Junctions, on a chip using a six-metal layer planar process with 0.25μm features, the company reports. D-Wave’s quantum computer runs a quantum annealing algorithm to find the lowest points, corresponding to optimal or near optimal solutions, in a virtual “energy landscape.” Every additional qubit doubles the search space of the processor. ...

Robotics research in the UK has been given a major boost with the launch of an EPSRC-funded UK Robotics and Autonomous Systems Network (UK-RAS Network). The aim of the network is to bring together robotics R&D activities in UK universities and to set up industry collaborations that hopefully will result in commercial products. Behind the a high-profile launch at the Science ...

Today, at the Imec Technology Forum, Imec and Holst Centre are demonstrating what they describe as the most advanced smart garment to date. The smart T-shirt measures a highly accurate electrocardiogram (ECG), recognises activity and calculates energy expenditure in an unobtrusive way, according to Imec. “Smart garments have the ability to tackle a vast range of applications from fitness tracking ...

Energy scavenging has found a new source of of power – ambient Wi-Fi signals. A PhD student at Washington University in Seattle, Vamsi Talla, scavenged energy from Wi-Fi signals and used it to power a temperature sensor. When stored in a capacitor the power was sufficient to allow a surveillance camera to take a picture every 35 minutes. For the ...