Magazine Articles - SAE Mobilus
Innovators at NASA Johnson Space Center, in collaboration with innovators at American Oxygen, have developed a solid-state system and process that separates oxygen from ambient air and compresses the resulting purified oxygen — with a significant reduction in power consumption compared to prior state-of-the-art. It is based upon a proven solid oxide electrochemical oxygen separation and compression technique that derives purified oxygen from ambient air and compresses it using an electrochemical pumping method.
What if there were a fabric that, like Superman, could take a bullet and self-heal? Such a super-dynamic, action-powered polymer might actually help protect real-life flyers in space.
A research team led by Professor Lin Gui at the Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, reports the first fabrication of multi-layer flexible batteries using a combination of liquid metal microfluidic perfusion and plasma-based reversible bonding techniques.
A machine-learning strategy has generated a new class of ultra-high strength and ductility steel for 3D printing that costs less, resists rust, and requires only a fraction of the usual processing time.
Penn Engineers have developed a novel design for solar-powered data centers that will orbit the Earth and could realistically scale to meet the growing demand for AI computing while reducing the environmental impact of data centers.
Led by Dr. Marina Freitag, a research group from the School of Natural and Environmental Sciences created dye-sensitized photovoltaic cells based on a copper (II/I) electrolyte, achieving an unprecedented power conversion efficiency of 38 percent and 1.0V open-circuit voltage at 1,000 lux (fluorescent lamp). The cells are non-toxic and environmentally friendly — setting a new standard for sustainable energy sources in ambient environments.
NASA Marshall Space Flight Center has developed a new small-scale metal extrusion tool, called a conventional friction stir extrusion (C-FSE) machine that may be attached or added-on to a conventional friction stir welding (C-FSW) system. The C-FSE machine uses the heat generation and plastic deformation processes underpinning C-FSW to perform metal extrusion instead of metal joining.
Engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have recently shown that nearly any material can be turned into a device that continuously harvests electricity from humidity in the air, work that was published in the journal Advanced Materials. The secret is being able to pepper the material with nanopores less than 100 nanometers in diameter.
Every kid who has read a comic book or watched a Spider-Man movie has tried to imagine what it would be like to shoot a web from their wrist, fly over streets, and pin down villains. Researchers at Tufts University took those imaginary scenes seriously and created the first web-slinging technology in which a fluid material can shoot from a needle, immediately solidify as a string, and adhere to and lift objects.
In the race to combat climate change, scientists are developing technologies to turn carbon dioxide (CO2) into valuable fuels and chemicals. These innovations help curb greenhouse gases while providing a low-carbon fuel to power our future. As the U.S. shifts to a low-carbon economy, we need environmentally friendly fuels to power vehicles that are hard to electrify, like planes, ships and trains. Scientists are developing the technology to convert CO2 to fuel. However, this conversion requires a lot of energy and water.
A team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) in Stuttgart developed a biohybrid micro swimmer covered with magnetic material, whose swimming ability is largely unaffected by the coating. The team from the Physical Intelligence Department at MPI-IS published their work in the journal Matter, which covers a wide range of materials science research.
Engineers have found a way to eliminate the fluid flow “dead zones” that plague the types of electrodes used for battery-based seawater desalination. The new technique uses a physics-based tapered flow channel design within electrodes that moves fluids quickly and efficiently, potentially requiring less energy than reverse osmosis techniques currently require.
3D printing could change how we build parts for jet engines and power plants, but the process leaves microscopic holes that cause the materials to shatter. Published in International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing, Professor Fangyong Niu’s team in Dalian University of Technology have fixed the problem by doing something unconventional: They added a microwave.
As recently as 2022, the production of construction materials accounted for . A good chunk of that can be solved by really thinking consciously about how we build a built environment, according to MIT Civil and Environmental Engineering Ph.D. student Zane Schemmer.
NASA Washington D.C.
Modern electric vehicles can go hundreds of miles without a recharge, but that long range can diminish faster if battery health isn’t properly tracked and managed. And to do that, you need some smart software — and some smarts from working with NASA.
Medical device manufacturing is undergoing a structural shift. As devices become smaller with broader functionality, traditional approaches to assembling electronics are no longer sufficient. Increasingly, performance, durability, and reliability are dictated not just by design, but by how that design is manufactured.
Labor shortages and supply chain volatility are putting additional pressure on warehouse operations to be faster and more adaptable. “In this environment, real-time visibility becomes foundational. Physical AI enables warehouses to operate with a continuously updated understanding of their environment, allowing them to respond quickly to disruptions and optimize performance,” Joseph Mirabile, Vice President of Operations at Gather AI, a Pittsburgh-based startup developing drone-powered inventory solutions.
Humanoid robots have long been the focus of science fiction, but today they are making their way into industrial environments thanks to the simultaneous maturing and convergence of multiple systems. Technology advances have driven the development of humanoid robots that have a wide range of movement and can perform demanding jobs around the clock without tiring. While currently representing a small share of all industrial robot deployments, the humanoid robot market is projected to grow rapidly over the next few years. In fact, estimates suggest the market could reach over $4 billion by 2030. This growth is being driven by factors such as labor shortages, falling costs, and the need for more flexible automation.
Physical AI refers to applications in which AI technologies are connected to hardware that sense and execute actions in the physical world, allowing systems to autonomously act and adapt in real time. It spans automotive, robotics, industrial automation, smart infrastructure, aerospace, healthcare devices, software-defined machines, and more. Regardless of application, they have one thing in common: they must operate safely, reliably, and predictably in real world environments. Unlike purely digital AI, these systems are constrained by embedded electronics, timing, power, safety, and system-level interactions that are difficult to validate early.
Spinoff is NASA’s annual publication featuring successfully commercialized NASA technology. This commercialization has contributed to the development of products and services in the fields of health and medicine, consumer goods, transportation, public safety, computer technology, and environmental resources.
Robotic manipulation remains one of the harder unsolved problems in automation engineering. Vision-based systems have matured considerably — object localization, pose estimation, and grasp planning from RGB-D data are now reliable enough for structured industrial environments. What vision cannot provide is contact information: whether a grasp is stable, whether a surface is beginning to slip, or how force is distributed across a fingertip during a hold. These signals are what close the control loop during manipulation, and without them, systems compensate through excessive grip force, conservative motion profiles, and large training datasets designed to paper over sensing uncertainty.
Humanoid robots are moving beyond hype-driven prototypes toward early commercial deployment, with automotive manufacturing emerging as the first scalable adoption market, according to IDTechX’s recent report Humanoid Robots 2026-2036: Technologies, Markets, and Opportunities.
Traditional industrial robotics has been built on traditional premises: define the task precisely, program the motion, and repeat it with minimal variation. This model has delivered reliability, speed, and scale across multiple application domains.
Automation has been a key part of manufacturing for over a century now, from the simple assembly lines of the past to the advanced, autonomous robotics of today. As the stresses placed on manufacturing systems continue to increase, however, the abilities of automated systems must increase as well. To meet the manufacturing demands of the 21st century, factory robotics must move beyond inflexible, hard-coded orders and gain the ability to quickly adapt to changing conditions — whether they be sudden business demands or new production requirements. This level of flexibility requires artificial intelligence (AI) certainly, but not just any AI; rather AI that can understand and interact with the real world. In other words, physical AI.
Pharmaceutical and life sciences manufacturers are under growing pressure to compress development timelines, from discovery to commercialization, as demographic, technological and geopolitical trends increase the pace of innovation and disruption. In the face of these challenges, many pharmaceutical manufacturers are finding their traditional processes, which are often built on fragmented data and highly manual workflows, are insufficient.
How to ensure off-highway combustion systems operate with sufficient control to meet tightening emissions standards and evolving fuel landscapes without sacrificing reliability. Off-highway equipment is being asked to do more with less. Less margin for emissions, less tolerance for downtime and less room for inefficiency, while operating under some of the most demanding duty cycles in the transport sector. Tier 4 and Tier 5 emissions standards have reshaped engine calibration strategies. Renewable diesel and biodiesel blends are entering worksites and farms at scale. At the same time, construction, mining and agricultural machines are expected to run for 20-25 years, often at sustained high load and far from service infrastructure. In this environment, combustion systems are far from being phased out.
Volvo Trucks' revised VNR brings updated safety tech, improved fuel economy and driver comfort features to the regional haul segment. Volvo Trucks has continued its rollout of new models for every sector of the commercial truck market. The redesigned VNR is the latest model to see the spotlight. The new VNR naturally carries all of Volvo's latest safety tech, but also prioritizes maneuverability, fuel efficiency and configurability for a wide variety of fleet uses. “The VNR is an incredibly versatile truck,” said Maddie Sullivan, product marketing manager. “There are so many different configurations to meet our customer's needs. We offer four different cab sizes, three different axle configurations and two different chassis configurations.”
OEMs, integrators and suppliers must continuously process, assess and identify platform vulnerabilities to prioritize and implement updates that protect systems from cyberattacks and data breaches. Security researchers have demonstrated that the control systems in vehicles and machines are open to attack. In 2010, researchers from the University of Washington and the University of California, San Diego demonstrated that by gaining physical access to a vehicle, they could manipulate critical systems like brakes and engines. Just a few years later, security researchers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek remotely compromised a vehicle over the internet, controlling steering, braking and acceleration, leading to a 1.4 million vehicle recall. In 2024, researchers at Colorado State University successfully demonstrated a wireless drive-by hack by exploiting vulnerabilities in common electronic logging devices (ELDs). In their proof-of-concept test, they achieved remote control over a truck by reflashing the ELD with malicious firmware, which allowed them to slow down a moving truck and show a design for a truck-to-truck worm virus that could theoretically spread through a fleet.
In the two months since Microvision bought Luminar and acquired key tech and talent, the sensor company has been busy. In that time, they've merged key lidar units from each company and created a perception software stack to run it in a convincing demo of its ADAS and autonomous capabilities. The company is also pushing innovative lidar tech into the defense drone and antidrone markets, already working with a German defense supplier that works with NATO member countries.
Precision agriculture, also known as smart farming, was once reserved for early adopters or large-scale operations, but is now an expectation within the farming industry. Across various regions and farm sizes, smart farming techniques are changing the way crops are planted as well as how they are monitored and harvested. However, farmers today are under increasing pressure to reduce labor, decrease chemical inputs, conserve water and operate in tighter windows. Couple this with factors such as narrow seasonal windows, productivity demands and safety considerations, and the need for smarter decisions becomes imperative. Going one step further, global food demands and environmental pressures are further increasing demand for precise, accurate and intelligent farming solutions.
Kenworth's new C580 vocational truck made its debut at CONEXPO 2026. The C580 is the replacement for the long-serving C500 and aims to build on that truck's legacy thanks to new tech, more muscle and improved interior amenities. According to Kenworth, the C580 rides on the C500 platform, but has been endowed with Kenworth's latest cab, which brings modern comfort and technology features. Truck & Off-Highway Engineering was in attendance for Kenworth's introductory press conference for the C580 in Las Vegas.
ZF foresees hybrid powertrain technology becoming more popular for commercial transport in the coming years, and it's working earnestly to be a major player in that realm. The supplier unveiled the TraXon 2 Hybrid transmission to the North American commercial vehicle market at last year's ACT Expo and is now evaluating the technology in real-world conditions. The next-gen automated manual transmission (AMT) is optimized to improve fuel efficiency for plug-in and full hybrid heavy-duty trucks and coaches, as well as special applications such as medium- to heavy-duty mobile cranes.
Though the U.S. EPA has rolled back many emissions regulations surrounding the mobility industry, its HD rules remain intact, meaning manufacturers must hit the world's most stringent NOx requirement. It was clear at a panel of industry experts that the new rule was still causing confusion among operators and fleet owners. The EPA's new limits are set at 0.035 grams per horsepower-hour during normal operation, 0.050 grams at low load and 10.0 grams at idle. A panel immediately following revealed how companies have hit the tough target, which goes into effect in January of 2027.
Sustainability needs to be practical. That was a point Peter Voorhoeve, president of Volvo Trucks North America, made clear at CONEXPO 2026 in Las Vegas. “We're running a business, so we are focusing a lot on efficiency and uptime,” he said, referencing the up-to-10% improvement in fuel efficiency with the new VNL. “That helps our customers to run their operations at a better pace and a lower cost, but at the same time we have a very positive impact on the climate.” Voorhoeve also teased the launch of a new vocational truck. “We are strong in long haul. We are a leading sleeper manufacturer, very strong in regional haul, and we now have renewed focus on vocational,” he said. “In August we will launch a new truck specifically for the vocational segment that's built on the same platform as the VNL and VNR.” (See page 22 for our feature story on the new VNR.)
Moog Inc. introduced its new adaptive electrification management system (AEMS) at a press conference during CONEXPO 2026 in Las Vegas. Moog states that this system offers a path to electrify, automate and digitalize construction machinery more efficiently and cost-effectively. “End users in the off-highway market are demanding that their machines have higher productivity and a lower total cost of ownership,” said Dr. Nate Keller, Moog strategic business manager. “OEMs are working to solve this problem, and one of the particular ways is through electrification.”
Harbinger revealed its HC Series Cab during Work Truck Week 2026 in Indianapolis, Indiana. The HC Series is a new line of medium-duty, low cab forward vehicles available as both an electric and plug-in hybrid model. Harbinger states that the HC Series' hybrid powertrain uses a range-extended hybrid platform with a gasoline engine to recharge the truck's batteries, extending range up to 500 miles (805 km), depending on upfit configuration and drive cycle.
We hear it often at industry events, in keynote speeches and during expert panel discussions: There is no silver bullet. Peter Voorhoeve, president of Volvo Trucks North America, says as much in this issue's Q&A (page 44). “Electric is one solution, but biodiesel is another solution, and hydrogen is, too. So we have these different fuel solutions to get to better sustainability.”
High-temperature hydraulic control in a Formula 1 drivetrain requires dimensional stability, controlled sealing force, and resistance to wear under sustained pressure cycling. Inside the limited-slip differential, the sealing architecture plays a defined mechanical role in maintaining consistent torque management under race conditions. In Formula 1, drivetrain reliability and performance are closely linked. The limited-slip differential (LSD) governs torque distribution between the rear wheels, allowing controlled transfer of power to the wheel with greater available grip. By limiting speed difference across the rear axle, the differential contributes directly to traction and cornering behavior, particularly where grip levels vary across the vehicle. At the center of this assembly is a hydraulic actuator that clamps a friction clutch inside the differential. The actuator modulates clutch engagement to redirect torque as grip levels change through corner entry, mid-corner load transfer, and acceleration on exit. Its performance depends on precise hydraulic control, which in turn depends on sealing integrity. Within this system, seal integrity is paramount, as significant leakage could cause a catastrophic loss of system function and force the team to retire the car.
Two of the biggest hurdles to adoption of hydrogen fuel cells are still the availability of hydrogen and its affordability. Now Bosch has taken what is a small step toward addressing availability at its Farmington Hills, Michigan, engineering center, where the company just unveiled its new electrolyzer, which uses electrical current to split water into oxygen and hydrogen to power fuel cells.
There's a well-known video from San Francisco in 1906 that comes up repeatedly in mobility discussions here in the 21st Century. If you haven't seen A Trip Down Market Street, it depicts the absolute bonkers variety of transportation methods used on Market Street back then: cable cars, horsecars, streetcars, pedestrians, automobiles and more. Past is prologue in a world that is adding scooters, delivery robots and other last-minute delivery vehicles to our streets. At the 2026 New York International Auto Show in April, Honda displayed its latest option in the form of the Fastport eQuad Prototype. The eQuad was originally unveiled at Eurobike 2025 and technically comes from Fastport, a micromobility venture from the Honda New Business Innovation Lab that was established to work on projects with global logistics companies. Jamie Davies, chief of operations for Fastport, called the group a kind of startup within Honda. “Three years ago,” Davies told SAE Media in New York, “a small group of Honda associates [came] together and [said], Okay, how can we create a new value for the company, a new business vertical? And so we've run the project in an agile way, working with customers all along the way to understand what their needs are, what the requirements are, and to bring to market something that fits.”
Kubota introduced the new SVL110-3 compact track loader at CONEXPO 2026 in Las Vegas. The SVL110-3 delivers 112.7 gross horsepower (84.0 kW), an increased torque output of 279 lb-ft (378 Nm) compared to previous models and a rated operating capacity of 3,700 lb (1,678 kg). The SVL110-3 is capable of 45 GPM (170 L/min) of auxiliary flow while operating with the same traveling speed and compact footprint as its predecessor, the SVL97-3. Kubota states that this increase in auxiliary capacity enables contractors to operate high-demand attachments like trenchers, cold planers and skid cutters at full performance without compromise.
It's not difficult to find warnings about the dangers of AI. The news that Anthropic's new AI tool is too dangerous for the public due to its alleged hacking capabilities should be of concern to every company making software. That includes automakers. Software has been part of the vehicles in our driveways for decades. In the past few years, even more so, with the push for software-defined vehicles (SDV). At SAE's 2026 WCX conference, a group of cybersecurity professionals from the vehicle industry discussed what AI and SDVs mean for current and future vehicles and how their jobs are about to get simultaneously easier and more difficult.
Not every joke works in every location. This week, during an opening panel at SAE International's WCX 2026, Ford's director of motion tech strategy at Ford, Mazen Hammoud, started off with a pun. Hammoud thanked the moderator, Chris Atkinson, professor and director of the Advanced Mobility Initiative at Ohio State University, for the introduction, then he paused and said, “I love your engines.” Sure, that's kind of a groaner, but it also brought out some smiles, which was not exactly guaranteed as a session called “Engineering a resilient propulsion strategy in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world.” Panelists discussed what our collective automotive future might look like in an industry where the powertrain of choice keeps changing these days.
The Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS, President: Dr. Lee Ho Seong) has developed equipment that monitors the quality of hydrogen fuel supplied to vehicles through hydrogen refueling stations in real-time. This equipment is expected to prevent hydrogen vehicle accidents caused by impurities in the hydrogen fuel and improve the quality of hydrogen production.
Smart implants that not only stabilize a fracture but also monitor the healing process from day one — and deliver targeted support when required — are currently being developed at Saarland University by a team of engineers, medical researchers, and computer scientists. The engineering team led by Paul Motzki is contributing shape-memory micro-actuators with integrated sensing capabilities, while Bergita Ganse and her research group provide the medical expertise in fracture healing.
Researchers in Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute (RI) have designed a system that makes an off-the-shelf quadruped robot nimble enough to walk a narrow balance beam.
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