Skip to content
Menu

Research

Nine subject areas, kept broad on purpose.

Areas on a map, not staffed departments. Nobody is assigned to any of them. One has work happening in it.

What the labels mean

  • BUILDING NOWCommits this month
  • PLANNEDNext step written down, not started
  • LONG-TERMDirection only, nobody building it
  • VERY LONG-TERMAmbitious idea, nowhere near

Only BUILDING NOW claims work is happening. The other three do not exist.

  • Computing & AI

    BUILDING NOW

    The strongest knowledge base at ME, and the only branch explored in depth.

    • Agent native OS design
    • Shared command routing
    • External models, not a frontier model

  • Energy

    LONG-TERM

    Power electronics first: conversion, control, distribution. Everything else sits on it.

    • Power electronics for dense compute
    • A smart DC bus
    • Protection coordination

  • Space & Satellites

    LONG-TERM

    Earth observation, delivering services large organizations actually buy.

    • Imaging, mapping, weather
    • Infrastructure monitoring
    • Orbital infrastructure

  • Robotics

    LONG-TERM

    Industrial, mobile and laboratory systems, and the interfaces agents drive them through.

    • Laboratory automation
    • Mobile platforms
    • Safe autonomy boundaries

  • Manufacturing

    LONG-TERM

    Distributed automated production rather than one large plant.

    • Standard production cells
    • Buy commodity inputs
    • Materials processing

  • Materials

    LONG-TERM

    Chosen by what other ME branches are blocked on.

    • Semiconductors
    • Metamaterials for optics
    • Composites for robotics and space

  • Medicine & Biotech

    VERY LONG-TERM

    Prosthetics, augmentation and longevity, sharing sensing work with wearables.

    • Prosthetics and augmentation
    • Longevity
    • Diagnostics and synthetic biology

  • Transportation

    VERY LONG-TERM

    Autonomous systems, aerospace, high speed transit and logistics.

    • Autonomy shared with robotics
    • Aerospace and transit
    • Logistics as a system

  • Frontier Research

    VERY LONG-TERM

    Speculative physics, propulsion and spacetime. High risk, and labelled as such.

    • Advanced propulsion
    • Spacetime and gravitation
    • Failing honestly, not quietly

Energy, in more detail

Power electronics: conversion, control, distribution. The layer everything else sits on.

What real distribution has to deal with

  • Voltage limits
  • Current limits
  • Conductor heating
  • Resistance losses
  • Insulation ageing
  • Switchgear under fault
  • Conversion losses
  • Cooling
  • Fault protection

Smart DC bus for labs and factory cells

Concept

Most bench equipment converts AC to DC anyway, often badly and repeatedly. Distributing DC once and well is worth studying.

Open questions

  • What voltage suits a bench and a cell
  • Which device disconnects first on a fault, and how fast
  • How a cell reports consumption without a second wiring system
  • What happens on a fault, designed rather than discovered

Not a design, not a specification, not advice. Nothing has been built or energised.