Engineers at Delft University of Technology developed a lightweight tactile sensor modeled on animal whiskers, allowing small drones to detect obstacles by touch rather than vision. The design targets ultra-compact rescue drones, which often operate in smoke-filled or dark environments where cameras and lidar fail. Professor Salwa Hamaza said the sensor must be lightweight, low-latency and low-power to work on such drones.
wired.com
· 2026-10-14
A study published in PLOS One by Gabriel Budel of Delft University of Technology and colleagues found that more than 3,000 academic article titles across disciplines borrow from Beatles song titles and lyrics. Using the Scopus database, the researchers identified 2,237 exact references and 963 instances of wordplay, spanning fields from medicine to computer science, economics and the humanities. The top 10 Beatles songs alone appeared in 1,584 article titles, far outpacing similar counts for Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley.
phys.org
· 2026-09-26
Engineers at Delft University of Technology built a lightweight whisker sensor system that lets tiny drones under 100 grams navigate by physical contact rather than cameras or LiDAR. Two whiskers mounted at the front connect to miniature pressure sensors that detect surface contact, letting the drone estimate depth, avoid obstacles, and map its surroundings using just 34KB of software.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-09-20
Researchers at Delft University of Technology, led by Gabriel Budel, analyzed scientific literature and found The Beatles are the most frequently referenced band in paper titles and text, with over 3,000 allusions to their songs. Examples include a Long COVID paper titled 'The Lung and Winding Road' and a quantum computing study called 'Here Comes the SU(N)'. The work builds on earlier research tracking Bob Dylan and Clash lyric references in biomedical journals.
arstechnica.com
· 2026-09-09
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