Engineering News

A group of researchers based out of the University of Bergen has started assessing potential oil and gas reserves with the help of a specially designed drone.

It can be hard to pinpoint the time when engineering innovations really move out from the laboratory to make a serious impact on the global economy, but one of the great new waves in manufacturing seems to be reaching that threshold  - 3D printing.

The rapid engineering innovation in the field of 3D printing has drawn plenty of attention in the past few years, and a good deal of speculation as to how far the technology could go. But what has often gotten less press are the engineering tools that companies and researchers use to produce the models that these new printers then bring into being.

NASA has been dealing with its wildly successful Curiosity rover for much of the past year, but the agency has several important satellites that are going to need some attention in coming months and years.

Wind turbines have been cropping up all around the country thanks to a growing emphasis on renewable energy, but there are still questions about how well the technology can compete with well-developed fossil fuels. The traditional wind mill-like approach is not the only means of producing electricity from wind, though, and one company believes that its new engineering innovation could completely reshape the market for wind energy.

Despite strong support from the government, the engineering innovations needed to bring electric vehicles into the mainstream have proven challenging to say the least. But Green Car Reports notes that Palo Alto, California-based Tesla Motors seems to have overcome some of the biggest hurdles keeping these cars out of the market after early numbers show the automaker beat out its biggest German rivals in the first quarter of the year.

On Friday, May 10, construction workers in New York City finally completed the new tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. Perhaps.

A great deal of attention has been focused in recent months on the growing use of drones in domestic airspace by everyone from police forces to utility companies cleaning up in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. But one of the biggest stories for unmanned aircraft is actually the effort to further expand their role in the military, as the Navy's X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS) prepares for one of its most important final tests later this month.

Another in a long line of innovative engineering solutions developed for the purposes of space travel, but finding uses right here on Earth, a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has found a way to produce steel without the associated carbon emissions.

A new power engineering solution developed by General Electric could bring the market for wind energy to entirely new heights, thanks to a new approach to energy storage.