JAKE SALTZMAN, NEWS EDITOR [email protected]A material developed and introduced by researchers at the University of Luxembourg will help robots analyze and understand their surroundings. The material relies on retroreflective spheres made from cholesteric liquid crystals, which turn into a solid state by the process of polymerization. According to members of a team led by Jan Lagerwall, principal investigator of the study and a professor in the Department of Physics and Materials Science, the material can be used to introduce tailor-made graphical information in the environment, which is invisible to humans but easily readable by...Read full articleRelated content from Photonics MediaArticlesIR Imager Merges AI, Thermal Physics to See in the DarkHeat-Assisted Detection and Ranging (HADAR), a patent-pending thermal imaging technology from Purdue University, combines infrared (IR) imaging, machine learning, and thermal physics to visualize...Photonics Spectra October 2023 IssueUV-LED Photolithography Imparts Micro FeaturesTechnologies like integrated signal distributing, processing, and sensing networks require basic optical elements such as waveguides, splitters, gratings, and optical switches to be miniaturized....Photonics Spectra April 2024 IssueCustomized Optical Trapping Spans Three DimensionsIn optical tweezing, a process which involves using beams of light to trap microscopic objects, the smaller the volume of light that confines a microparticle, the more tightly the particle can be...Photonics Spectra October 2024 IssueTime-Resolved Spectroscopy Peers in on Irreversible PhenomenaA team of researchers at the University of Ottawa developed a terahertz (THz) spectroscopy technique for recording movies in real time at 50,000 fps. 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