Robots are typically built with a single purpose in mind. In contrast, new elastic sheets full of high-tech gear turn almost anything into useful robots. Robotics are usually something rigid, heavy, and built for a specific purpose. New ‘Robotic Skins’ technology developed by Yale researchers flips that notion on its head, allowing users to animate the inanimate and turn everyday objects into robots.

  In a series of experiments using teams of human players and robotic AI players, the inclusion of 'bots' boosted the performance of human groups and the individual players, researchers found. The study appears in the journal Nature.

Yale astronomers have discovered a "lost" planet that is nearly the size of Neptune and tucked away in a solar system 3,000 light years from Earth. The new planet, Kepler-150 f, was overlooked for several years. Computer algorithms identify most such "exoplanets," which are planets located outside our solar system. The algorithms search through data from space mission surveys, looking for the telltale transits of planets orbiting in front of...

A Yale-led team has produced one of the highest-resolution maps of dark matter ever created, offering a detailed case for the existence of cold dark matter - sluggish particles that comprise the bulk of matter in the universe. The dark matter map is derived from Hubble Space Telescope Frontier Fields data of a trio of galaxy clusters that act as cosmic magnifying glasses to peer into older, more distant parts of the universe, a phenomenon kn...

  Journeying to the center of the Earth, a la Jules Verne, won't be happening anytime soon. A new material made from a liquid metal and magnetic particles, however, could make it much easier for researchers to recreate the powerful forces at the planet's core.

On the wall of Aaron Dollar's office is a poster for R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), the 1920 Czech play that gave us the word "robot." The story ends with the nominal robots seizing control of the factory of their origin and then wiping out nearly all of humanity. Dollar, fortunately, has something more cheerful in mind for the future of human-robot relations. He sees them as helpers in our daily lives—performing tasks like settin...

Yale researchers have developed a high-frequency version of a device known as an acoustic resonator that could advance the field of quantum computing and information processing. Hong Tang, Yale's Llewellyn West Jones Jr. Professor of Electrical Engineering & Physics, and his research team, accomplish this with what's also known as a piezo-optomechanical device.

Sticky nanoparticles that deliver drugs precisely to their targets—and then stay there—could play a crucial role in fighting ovarian and uterine cancers. A team of researchers at Yale found that a treatment using bioadhesive nanoparticles loaded with a potent chemotherapy drug proved more effective and less toxic than conventional treatments for gynecological cancer.

Yale University scientists have reached a milestone in their efforts to extend the durability and dependability of quantum information. For the first time, researchers at Yale have crossed the "break even" point in preserving a bit of quantum information for longer than the lifetime of its constituent parts. They have created a novel system to encode, spot errors, decode, and correct errors in a quantum bit, also known as a "qubit."

A Yale-led team of researchers developed a new approach to scanning the brain for changes in synapses that are associated with common brain disorders. The technique may provide insights into the diagnosis and treatment of a broad range of disorders, including epilepsy and Alzheimer's disease. The study was published in Science Translational Medicine. Certain changes in synapses—the junctions between nerve cells in the brain&m...

Yale scientists have found a way to greatly boost the intensity of light waves on a silicon microchip using the power of sound. Writing in the journal Nature Photonics, a team led by Peter Rakich describes a new waveguide system that harnesses the ability to precisely control the interaction of light and sound waves. This work solves a long-standing problem of how to utilise this interaction in a robust manner on a silicon chip as the basis for p...

Yale scientists have developed a laser imaging system with the versatility to look at both the structure of biological tissue and the dynamic activity—such as a heartbeat or the movement of blood cells—that goes on inside. In one mode, the laser images structural information by reducing the amount of "speckle," a random, grainy pattern that can corrupt the formation of images. Speckle is often found in the light emitted by traditional...

An immunotherapy drug delivery system created at Yale that can carry multiple drugs inside a tiny particle is heading toward its first phase of clinical trials for a possible new treatment for cancer. The delivery system, a nanogel developed in the lab of associate professor Tarek Fahmy, can be used for multiple combinations of drugs for many different cancers and some immune disorders. The platform is designed to deliver multiple drugs with diff...

Are robots our evil overlords, or our personal servants? Another possibility altogether is that they’re our dependable co-workers, helping us put together that new Ikea bookcase.

Remember all the high-tech transparent technology Tom Cruise used in Minority Report? Well, it’s been 13 years since that movie came out, where are our see-through devices?

  Combine mechanical engineering, experimental theatre, and an old dark church, and you’re bound to get some interesting results... A new navigation device, for instance.

If Li-air batteries live up to their promise, we could one day be driving electric cars 500 miles or more without recharging, or using laptops for weeks without having to plug in. They could also replace Li-ion batteries, currently the standard in many consumer electronics.