Interesting Engineering

You've seen IE on your feed. You've only seen part of it. The IE App has every story, every video (even the ones that never make it to social) and a new engineering puzzle every day. Out now on iPhone and Android. ⏩ iOS: apple.co/4wSW6LY ⏩ Android: playgoogle.s.gy/Sfwv1G

The first molecule of green hydrogen was produced by a 30-megawatt (MW) German energy plant powered by a 50MW wind farm. bit.ly/4jbOWyu

IBM is preparing to scale its Nighthawk quantum architecture beyond 1,000 qubits in 2027. bit.ly/4zkRPSK

The Neros Archer is designed to give small units a precision-strike option beyond the reach of conventional infantry weapons. bit.ly/4teWqVb

Austin startup Pipedream Labs runs battery-powered robots on rails through pipes buried a few feet underground, delivering orders to pickup portals without touching a road. After a test line in Peachtree Corners, Georgia, it opened Goods, an Austin grocery store with two-minute underground pickup, in February 2026. Its long-term goal is citywide delivery in under 10 minutes for less than a dollar.

A satellite-based long-wave infrared sensor designed to track spacecraft that hide their maneuvers in Earth’s shadow has been successfully demonstrated by Anduril Industries. The oven-sized Anduril-216 launched on a SpaceX rideshare mission in July and flies about 590 kilometers above Earth, spending roughly one-third of each orbit in darkness. Because the sensor detects heat signatures rather than reflected sunlight, it can see objects in full dark, closing a gap where ground-based and visible-light systems lose track of satellites during eclipse periods. The satellite also carries an edge-compute module that fuses data from different sensors and generates tracking solutions on its own, without analysis from the ground. Anduril released an infrared image of the Moon above Earth’s horizon as a first taste of the instrument. The spacecraft platform was built by Apex Space, and Anduril says it is currently focused on selling space domain awareness data to the US military.

Google’s Gemini Decisions API evaluates 1,000 questions at once, delivering multimodal decisions in 150–250 milliseconds. bit.ly/3UpxoFS

The MiG-29 can climb into the stratosphere, putting it in the same altitude band as the F-15, Su-27 and MiG-31.

Jensen Huang’s reported relationships have triggered an escalating crisis at Nvidia. bit.ly/4iB7CYr

After decades of uncertainty, the historic SS United States has been sunk in the Gulf of Mexico to create a massive artificial reef. bit.ly/48N2WJ3

The real-life GTA VI cars were photographed at iconic Miami landmarks, including 1111 Lincoln Road and Miami Marine Stadium. bit.ly/4Ar5mJg

The airliner crossed three continents on the record nonstop flight. bit.ly/4AkTJ6A

To develop a flight-ready product, SunDrive Solar and Space Machines Company (SMC) have partnered for the project. bit.ly/4AMlfdF

A three-wheeled vehicle with fold-out solar wings has been developed by the global development organization BRAC to help Bangladeshi farmers irrigate their fields without diesel. Named Ponkhiraj after a flying horse from Bangladeshi folklore, it carries 3.3-kW monocrystalline solar panels that power a 3-hp pump, which draws water from a nearby canal or lake and delivers up to 60,000 liters per hour. BRAC says it can irrigate about one hectare per day for roughly 80 cents, compared with about $8 for a diesel pump. Over 80% of pumps in Bangladesh run on mostly imported diesel, and soaring fuel prices have put it out of reach for many farmers. The vehicle is built on a modified electric Tempu, a common cargo hauler, so it can travel narrow rural roads from farm to farm. Its batteries can also serve as a mobile power hub, and BRAC plans to build more and expand to other developing nations.

XDOWN’s STUD drone aims to bring strike capabilities to individual soldiers. bit.ly/4zj8d5T

Surplus electricity will pump water uphill for peak demand. bit.ly/3WGohRI

Washington’s Hanford site is opening thousands of acres to commercial clean energy. bit.ly/4iBIDnS

XPeng targets 2027 for its two-seat flying car, combining road travel with detachable autonomous flight. bit.ly/4zj9QAS

A compact millimeter-wave radar worn on a wristband can turn the skin of a smartwatch user’s forearm into a trackpad, letting them scroll, zoom, and click without touching the tiny screen. Developed at North Carolina State University, the system is called EpiPad. It reads the tiny dents that fingertips make as they press the skin, so it can track multiple fingers and how hard each one presses, matching the force-touch detail of a laptop trackpad. The sensor array measures only about 5 by 4 millimeters, and a new user can calibrate it in under four minutes. In tests with 20 participants, EpiPad beat both a traditional touchscreen and a tilt cursor on error rate and efficiency. The components cost less than $10, and the technology could also work with screenless wearables like AI glasses. The research is published in the Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies.