Emerging Tech

Aerospace engineers, graduate assistants and professors are re-creating the conditions of space as they build and test miniaturized sensors and instruments to help NASA better understand the cosmos.

Drone as First Responder programs have been adopted across the country, and in them, police place drones across their coverage areas and send them to determine if a ground response is needed.

The University of Maryland Extension in Frederick, Md., is looking to expand practical research into cover crops with the goal of better understanding how farmers learn from each other.

Amazon is launching a showroom on lower Market Street in San Francisco to demonstrate its AI and robotics efforts, and quad-wheel Amazon branded bots are a tease for the techie wonders inside.

Instead of human employees and walk-in customers, a robotic humanoid is set to dispense snacks and other groceries to delivery drivers in an area once listed among the nation's hottest ZIP codes.

The Federal Aviation Administration, which has checked drone use for years, recently granted Amazon’s Prime Air program approval to fly drones beyond the visual line of sight from its pilots in parts of Texas.

Law enforcement agencies across the country are buzzing about drones, but what’s the real impact? Government Technology got an exclusive video look at how one rural sheriff’s department is using UAVs to change the game.

Two tech firms are adding updated radar to unmanned aircraft, hoping to give police and firefighters better eyes in the sky and options for longer automated flights. The deal could help agencies with staffing woes.

Californians will soon be able to store their mobile driver’s license (mDL) or state ID in their Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, on their mobile device. More than 500,000 residents have obtained mDLs in an ongoing pilot.

The police netted a federal grant through the Department of Justice to buy two Apex Virtual Reality training systems, a $69,000 piece of tech officials say promotes training efficiency and cuts overall costs.

Covered California delivers health insurance to state residents via the exchange it created in 2012. In 2020, the agency’s consumer-facing platform, CalHEERS, struggled to keep up with a historic spike in enrollments during COVID-19. This forced agency CIO Kevin Cornish to act quickly and decisively. In this Q&A, Cornish explains how the cloud has made his agency’s IT system more responsive and resilient.

New high-resolution images of a wildfire west of Loveland, Colo., that were captured by a stratospheric microballoon could help first responders validate real-time fire data. The project documented the state’s largest wildfire of 2024.

Residents of the Buckeye State gained the ability Wednesday to add their driver’s licenses to their Apple Wallets — and more than 75,000 had done so by late Friday, the state said.

The company behind the cryptocurrency mine, Blockfusion Ventures, is exploring powering the endeavor by a nuclear microreactor. A “technical assessment” of “advanced power supply systems” for its data center is on the way.

The Midwest state is the fifth in the nation to enable residents to take their licenses digital. But officials said Wednesday that does not replace a physical ID — which is still needed for driving and interacting with law enforcement.

The site, long home to steel manufacturing, is expected to land billions in investment from California-based tech company PsiQuantum, which is working to build the first commercially viable quantum computer.

SpaceX is apparently seeking permission from federal regulators to land its Super Heavy booster at its Boca Chica Beach launch tower rather than have it splash into the Gulf of Mexico during Starship's next flight.

The idea was to triple-check this year’s presidential election results by uploading images of every ballot cast, scanning them with text-recognition software and creating an independent vote count.