Julianna Photopoulos 
In the zero-carbon cities of the future, commuting to work may take the form of hailing a driverless shuttle through an app which ferries you from your door to the nearest public transport terminal. In fact, autonomous shuttles have been in development in restricted areas for the past few years. So what will it take to … Read more
Applying a coat of paint on the walls of a house may soon help to heat it, saving energy and reducing CO2 emissions. It could also clean the air that we breathe, breaking down chemicals and pollutants, and eliminating harmful pathogens. In Europe, half of cities’ annual energy consumption goes to heating and cooling. Despite the EU’s … Read more
Pinpointing how different emotional states and neural pathways influence our eating behaviours could pave the way for better ways to tackle eating disorders and obesity. Eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia can have life-threatening consequences. They affect around 20 million people in the European Union, with an estimated cost of €1 trillion per year. The exact cause … Read more
Next-generation wheelchairs could incorporate brain-controlled robotic arms and rentable add-on motors in order to help people with disabilities more easily carry out daily tasks or get around a city. Professor Nicolás García-Aracil from the Universidad Miguel Hernández (UMH) in Elche, Spain, has developed an automated wheelchair with an exoskeleton robotic arm to use at home, … Read more
When you’re sleepy, stressed or have had a few drinks, you’re not in the best position to drive – or even make that decision. But automated cars could soon make that call for you. In Europe, more than 25,000 people lose their lives on the road every year, while another 135,000 are seriously injured. The main culprits … Read more
Robust, intelligent robots that react to their surroundings are being developed to work in situations that are too dangerous for humans, such as cleaning up Europe’s decades-old radioactive waste or helping during a nuclear emergency. When Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster struck in 2011 following a devastating earthquake and tsunami, the robots that were deployed to … Read more