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Aspiring engineers from 191 countries gathered in Panama City in October to compete in the FIRST Global Robotics Challenge. The annual contest aims to foster problem-solving, cooperation, and inspire the next generation of engineers through three challenges that are inspired by a different theme every year. Teams of students from 14 to 18 years old from around the world compete in the three day event, remotely operating their robots to complete the challenges. This year’s topic was “Eco-equilibrium,” emphasizing the importan

While there are many useful questions to ask when encountering a new robot, “can I eat it” is generally not one of them. I say ‘generally,’ because edible robots are actually a thing—and not just edible in the sense that you can technically swallow them and suffer both the benefits and consequences, but ingestible, where you can take a big bite out of the robot, chew it up, and swallow it.Yum.But so far these ingestible robots have included a very please-don’t-ingest-this asterisk: the motor and bat

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 2026: 1–5 June 2026, VIENNAEnjoy today’s videos! Current multirotor drones provide simplicity, affordability, and ease of operation; however, their primary limitation is their low payload-to-weig

There’s a class of consumer that wants something they know they cannot have. For some of those people, a Macintosh computer not made by Apple has long been a desired goal.For most of the Mac’s history, you could only really get one from Apple, if you wanted to go completely by the book. Sure, there were less-legit ways to get Apple software on off-brand hardware, and plenty of people were willing to try them. But there was a short period, roughly 36 months, when it was possible to get a licensed Mac that had the blessing of the team in Cupertino.They called it the Mac clone era. It was Apple’s direct response to a PC market that had come to embrace open architectures—and, over time, mad

Healthcare is rapidly evolving with a growing reliance on portable medical devices in both clinical and home-care environments. These devices—used for diagnostics, monitoring, and life-support functions like ventilators—improve accessibility and outcomes by enabling continuous monitoring and timely interventions. However, their mobility and usage in high-impact environments demand rugged, compact, and high-speed components, particularly reliable internal connectors that can withstand shock, vibration, and physical stress.This white paper highlights how the growth of portable and in-home medical devices has pushed the need for miniaturized, high-performance connectors. It explores how connector technology must balance reduced size, high data speeds, rugged durability, and simplified assembly to support modern healthcare demands.

The IEEE Board of Directors shapes the future direction of IEEE and is committed to ensuring IEEE remains a strong and vibrant organization—serving the needs of its members and the engineering and technology community worldwide while fulfilling the IEEE mission of advancing technology for the benefit of humanity. This article features IEEE Board of Directors members Antonio Luque, Ravinder Dahiya, and Joseph Wei. IEEE Senior Member Antonio LuqueDirector and vice president, Member and Geographic Activities

Are you finally ready to hang a computer screen on your face?Fifteen years ago, that would have seemed like a silly question. Then came the much-hyped and much-derided Google Glass in 2012, and frankly, it still seemed a silly question.Now, though, it’s a choice consumers are beginning to make. Tiny displays, shrinking processors, advanced battery designs, and wireless communications are coming together in a new generation of smart glasses that display information that’s actually useful right in front of you. But the big question remains: Just why would you want to do that?Some tech companies are betting that today’s smart glasses will

This post originally appeared on Recode China AI.For more than a decade, Nvidia’s chips have been the beating heart of China’s AI ecosystem. Its GPUs powered search engines, video apps, smartphones, electric vehicles, and the current wave of generative AI models. Even as Washington tightened export rules for advanced AI chips, Chinese companies kept settling for and buying “China-only” Nvidia chips stripped of their most advanced features—H800, A800, and H20.But by 2025, patience in Beijing had seemingly snapped. State m

How much pain are you in on a scale from one to 10? This simple method is still the way pain is measured in doctors’ offices, clinics, and hospitals—but how do I know if my five out of 10 is the same as yours? A new, early-stage platform aims to more objectively measure and share our individual perception of pain. It measures brain activity in two people in order to understand how their experiences compare and recreate one person’s pain for the other. The platform was developed as a partnership between the large Tokyo-based telecommunications company

Around ten years ago, fantastical media coverage of 3D printing dramatically increased expectations for the technology. A particular darling of that coverage was the use of 3D-printing for prosthetic limbs: For example, in 2015, The New York Times celebrated the US $15 to $20 3D-printed prosthetic hands facilitated by the nonprofit E-nable, which paired hobbyist 3D printer owners with children with limb differences. The magic felt undeniable: disabled children could get cheap, freely accessible mechanical hands made