26/07/2017
Robotics and autonomous systems (RAS) are one of the Eight Great Technologies, identified in 2013 by the previous UK coalition government, in which the UK could become a global leader.
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25/07/2017
Users of battery powered consumer electronic devices usually have one thing in mind; how long will it last before the battery needs to be recharged. Depending on the device and how it’s used, that could be less than a day.
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25/07/2017
In June 2013, Sir Mark Walport and Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell, co chairs of the Council for Science and Technology, sent a letter to then Prime Minister David Cameron entitled ‘The Age of Algorithms’. The letter contained eight recommendations, the sixth of which was the establishment of a National Centre to promote advanced research and translational work in algorithms and the application of data science. “This could fittingly be named the ‘Alan Turing Centre’,” they noted.
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25/07/2017
Despite the UK economy’s reliance on the financial and services sectors over the recent past, there remains an understanding that the development of technology has – and will continue to have – an important role to play. And if that technology can be translated into the creation of thriving companies, then all the better.
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25/07/2017
While the UK has less than 1% of the world’s population and accounts for just 3.2% of global R&D spending, it produces 16% of the world’s most cited research papers. Meanwhile, the Global Innovation Index ranked the UK third out of 128 countries in 2016.
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21/07/2017
The rapid pace of technological advancement should be celebrated and embraced. It fuels amazing new technologies and scientific achievements that make us more connected and safer. It also pushes the limits of what we previously thought possible. The impact of these achievements is no longer isolated to a narrow market vertical. It permeates every industry and exposes the established market incumbents to an unusual combination of disruption and growth potential.
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12/07/2017
Lithium-ion batteries require considerable care if they are to operate reliably over a long period. Because they cannot be operated to the extreme end of their state of charge (SOC) and because their capacity diminishes and diverges over time and with use, every cell in a system must be managed to keep it within a constrained SOC.
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11/07/2017
With the Google car and similar initiatives, almost all the focus in transportation is on self-driving cars. Trucks, however, could also benefit from extra automation and connectivity to enable preventive maintenance, improve safety, efficiency and cost. Might we therefore one day soon see trucks on our roads with no driver in the front seat?
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11/07/2017
In the last two years, consumers have become increasingly discerning when it comes to audio quality and expect to enjoy full compatibility between their devices, regardless of the brand.
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28/06/2017
The availability of new mmWave frequency bands will be key to achieving the ambitious mobile data rate targets associated with 5G. But what are the likely operating bands or the technology and packaging options that will help to realise those essential mmWave components?
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27/06/2017
The latest ‘buzz phrases’ to emerge into general use are ‘machine learning’ and artificial intelligence, or AI. Both techniques have wide application, so it’s no surprise to find technology companies all of types pursing the opportunities.
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27/06/2017
Since the announcement in the Queen’s Speech to Parliament in May 2015 that a referendum would be held on the UK’s continuing membership of the European Union (EU), there have been considerable expressions of concern about the potential effect of a withdrawal on the country’s research and development efforts.
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16/06/2017
For more than 50 years, test engineers have been taking a PC-based approach to automating stand-alone instrumentation. With so much investment tied up in capital assets for test equipment, engineers are looking for reassurance that they can satisfy current and future testing needs. While capital expenditure on hardware is often the easiest cost to associate with test, the importance of a good software investment is commonly overlooked. Instrumentation will continue to evolve, but one thing remains consistent over time – software. Software is at the heart of every instrument control system, and it can help you future proof your application.
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13/06/2017
A revolution is unfolding amongst manufacturing companies, with an increasing number investing in smart factory technology – intelligent machines, devices and measurement and testing equipment – to monitor every critical parameter of the manufacturing process.
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13/06/2017
It’s probably fair to say that an electronic engineer’s ‘go to’ instrument is an oscilloscope. Recognising that, test and measurement product developers have regularly updated their portfolios; not only adding more features, but also providing devices which meet a much broader range of user needs.
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24/05/2017
Defective products or work represent the largest cause of liability loss for businesses, accounting for 43% of the value of all claims in the UK. The average value of such claims is in excess of £312,000, with the cost of product recalls a major factor.
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24/05/2017
When Freescale introduced the i.MX processor line in 2001, it’s probably fair to say traditional embedded systems developers didn’t rush to embrace them.
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23/05/2017
Although it’s 15 years since LED lighting made its debut, take-up is accelerating across all areas of lighting, helped by its lower power consumption, longer lifespan, increased robustness and faster switching capabilities.
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23/05/2017
The pressure on those developing new battery chemistries is increasing as consumers demand the ability to use their electronic devices for longer between charges. And it seems that researchers are responding with a range of potential solutions, not only based on lithium, but also exploring other elements. Beyond that, solid state electrolytes are beginning to show promise.
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12/05/2017
Faster, quieter and more reliable, with better performance. Flash memory based solid state storage devices (SSD) are pushing hard disk drives out of the market and could, one day soon, replace them all together, according to Robert Fan, president of NAND controller developer Silicon Motion.
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26/04/2017
The risks and pitfalls of bringing a product to market on time and within budget are legion yet, as the IoT helps to lower the barriers associated with the deployment of new technology, a growing number of start-ups are looking to take their ideas to market.
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25/04/2017
For Professor Veljko Milutinovic of the University of Belgrade, computing stands on the edge of major change and it is one that was predicted by physicist Richard Feynman because of the way computing uses energy. In his lecture notes on computation written in the early 1980s – but not published until eight years after his death in 1988 – Feynman argued that computing itself at its limit could incur practically no energy and that all the power would instead go into computation.
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12/04/2017
Up to 80% of a company’s document information can be contained in different or separate formats – such as Word, Excel, pdf and AutoCAD – according to Jurate Venskeviciute-Buciene, chief marketing officer at DocLogix, a specialist in document and process management.
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07/04/2017
Imagine today’s typical test manager, awash in an alphabet soup of wireless protocols and sensors upon sensors. Thanks to the proliferation of smart devices in the Internet of Things (IoT), it’s a circumstance not unlike a star-filled sky, teeming with a dizzying mix of possibility and disorientation that is surely keeping organisational leaders up at night as they wonder what to do next.
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29/03/2017
The automotive industry is going through some significant changes at the minute, with electric and connected vehicles already on the road. Meanwhile, autonomous vehicles are being tested across the globe and will, potentially, enter the mainstream in just a few years.
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