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Engineers and scientists at The University of Texas at Austin and the AMOLF institute in the Netherlands have invented the first mechanical metamaterials that easily transfer motion effortlessly in one direction while blocking it in the other, as described in a paper published on Feb. 13 in Nature. The material can be thought of as a mechanical one-way shield that blocks energy from coming in but easily transmits it going out the other side.

WNCG Prof. Todd Humphreys and his group of researchers in the Radionavigation Laboratory made headlines in recent months with their major breakthroughs in centimeter-accurate positioning. A few of the students have already created a startup spin-off to push these breakthroughs in precise positioning to the mass market.

Imagine drawing a light painting using a phone’s antenna and GPS system. Imagine a world of virtual reality, where buildings are perfect replicas of their real-world counterparts, down to the exact height of a piece of gum stuck under a desk. Where a person cannot only see their location on the street but also the exact height and orientation of their mobile device in hand. This world of imagination and precise positioning is now becoming a reality, and through the efforts of WNCG students, even finding its way to market. 

Img: Two of the Cockrell School graduate students behind Radiosense, Ken Pesyna and Andrew Kerns. Cockrell School of Engineering, UT Austin Researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a centimeter-accurate GPS-based positioning system that could revolutionize geolocation on virtual reality headsets, cellphones and other technologies, making global positioning and orientation far more precise than what is currently available on a mobile device.

Join Prof. Andrea Alù as he shares insight into his work with metamaterials, light and an "invisibility cloak." 

Image: Erik Zumalt, The University of Texas at Austin Profs. Andrea Alù and Mikhail Belkin in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin have created a new nonlinear metasurface, or meta mirror, that could one day enable the miniaturization of laser systems.