Women have conquered space, but still struggle to break the glass ceiling of the construction sector. How robots will tackle gender imbalances, foster safety and save the industry from the “ticking bomb” of labour force shortage

The sense of touch has been mostly neglected so far in technology. However, research in haptics applied to virtual and augmented realities is opening up new possibilities in endless fields, from surgery to gaming. With a touch of Star Trek science

Current and former early-career scientists share their stories and tell how Europe has bet on them, making their high-risk research possible: from intelligent wireless sensors with vision abilities to RNA-based techniques to fight viruses, from the mathematical formulas of the MRI waves to optoceutics, the new technique that uses light to repair the heart after a stroke

Could your smartphone detect the coronavirus on surfaces? European researchers are developing a new generation of optical microscopes for mobile phones where LEDs and tiny detectors in the camera can analyse very small structures

Spanish innovator Ana Maiques has developed a wireless device to treat brain diseases at patients’ homes. Her research has had a considerable boost during the Covid-19 emergency

If computers transmitted data using photons instead of electrons, they would perform better and devour less power. European researchers are now studying a new light-emitting alloy of silicon and germanium to obtain photonic chips, which can revolutionise computing

Researchers are trying to investigate whether the human body has specific odours a person feels happy or sad. The aim is to develop a dispenser that can spray substances able to help patients suffering from phobias and depression

More than two decades ago, a hand prosthesis able to give back a sense of touch to amputees would have been dubbed as science fiction. Today this has been proved possible, and now the goal is to make this technology available for as many patients as possible

An ambitious study is trying to restore the neural connections that are lost during heart transplants, thus improving the life expectancy of patients

From the bionic hand to a Fantastic Voyage-inspired capsule in the human body: Paolo Dario, founder of The BioRobotics Institute of the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, shares the most important achievements over the last 20 years in their revolutionary integration of robotics with biology and medicine

Robots can utilise computational natural selection to boost experimental power and avoid hours of trial and error

Ten years ago the octopus inspired the world's first entirely soft robot, made with silicone. The artificial octopus allowed researchers to simplify control and sensory-motor behaviour of robots, enabling them to be more efficient than rigid-linked hard machines. Everything started from a dream of researcher Cecilia Laschi

Robots are usually inspired by humans and animals. But the very last frontier is the ‘plantoids’ – plant robots able to move and explore the environment with their smart sensors. Their ‘mother’ is researcher Barbara Mazzolai

As NASA’s Mars InSight is set to burrow into Martian soil, roboticists on Earth are still developing devices for soil monitoring and exploration

European researchers are designing a computer using very large and non-volatile high-speed RAM (NVRAM). Such memory will be used first in data centers, but later should appear in phones and tablets

One day we may not only see, hear and touch devices, but also feel the objects shown on them at the tip of our fingers. Thanks to levitation, 3D items will be created using floating pixels

Imitating nature’s engineering secrets at the nanoscale could lead to a host of useful applications

Unique physical properties of these “magic knots” might help to satisfy demand for IT power and storage using a fraction of the energy

Designing intelligent machines that can resemble and model human behaviour is closer than we think. And you can join in