Background Under-actuated compliant systems have grown in prevalence in recent years in the soft robotics area. The coupled stiffness and damping characteristics of system structure and materials of these systems enable robotic systems for tasks including locomotion and gripping. Legged robots in particular exhibit superior maneuverability in intricate...

Background Mid to long-wave infrared detectors capture and interpret infrared radiation emitted by objects, and convert it into additional data. These detectors have wide ranging applications including gas sensing, thermal imaging, environmental monitoring, and defense applications. Typically, these detectors use micro- or nano-scale microwave-frequency...

Background The increasing frequency and severity of wildfires creates difficulty for power engineers to decide on the best course of action for ensuring reliable and resilient system operation. To enable informed decision-making in the presence of active wildfire risks, knowledge of the local environmental conditions surrounding the electric power...

Background Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) has been envisioned to benefit various emerging applications in the future, with enhanced spectral, energy, and hardware efficiency. One potential scenario is the use of radio frequency identification (RFID) for inventory management in warehouses or retail stores, where low-cost passive RFID tags...

Background Adversarial purification is a defense mechanism for safe-guarding classifiers against adversarial attacks without knowing the type of attacks or training of the classifier. These techniques analyze and eliminate adversarial perturbations from the attacked inputs, and help to restore purified samples that retain similarity to the attacked...

Background X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) produce x-ray pulses with durations shorter than 100 femtoseconds. Each pulse contains enough photons to produce a diffraction pattern from a nanocrystal in a single shot, while avoiding most effects of radiation damage. XFELs are increasing in prevalence in a range of applications due to their capacity...

Background The use of ring-shaped wearables for finger gesture recognition has been widely explored, with numerous sensing methods developed to detect hand movements, actions, and object interactions. While innovative approaches—such as inertial measurement units (IMUs) and electrical sensing techniques—have shown promise, camera-based...

Background Image fusion is an image processing technique that has grown in prevalence in recent years. Image fusion can be used for many different applications including medical imaging, aerospace, remote sensing, military surveillance, and manufacturing flaw identification. Quantum image fusion is a more recent development that uses quantum computing...

Background Commercial drone delivery systems are increasingly used, particularly in the US and in China, with over 2000 deliveries occurring in 2022. Drone delivery systems have many advantages over conventional delivery systems, including lower costs, faster deliveries, and increased energy efficiency. However, drone delivery systems can lead to increased...

Background Utility pipes are a crucial component of public health and safety infrastructure, and it is critical to conduct regular inspections to ensure functionality. Currently, most pipes are inspected by human operators, which can pose safety concerns as well as inaccuracy and limited accessibility. As an alternative, in-pipe robots are increasingly...