Innovate UK has announced the four UK locations picked to test driverless cars.Bristol and Greenwich will each host a project of their own, while Coventry and Milton Keynes will share a third. The news was announced yesterday after George Osborne's Autumn Statement, who pledged an additional £10million for the work. ...

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) has officially adopted version 4.2 of the Bluetooth core specification. The upgrades included in v4.2 are said to improve privacy and increase speed. "Bluetooth 4.2 is all about continuing to make Bluetooth Smart the best solution to connect all the technology in your life – from person...

Michael Hsiao, Professor of electrical and computer engineering at Virginia Tech in the US, has developed mathematical formulae that simulate the methods used by the ants to find the best route to food sources and plans to use these algorithms to improve the accuracy of electronics design. According to Prof Hsiao, as electronics designers...

 An Israeli company has developed a battery technology that can charge a mobile phone in just 30 seconds and couold charge an electric car in minutes.Created by researchers from Tel-Aviv based technology firm StoreDot, the battery can store a much higher charge more quickly, in effect acting like a sponge to soak up power and retai...

British Engineering Excellence Awards headline sponsor Cambridge Consultants has opened a £6million wireless facility, designed to help it to keep pace with its rapid growth. The company has grown by 25% in 2014, taking its global workforce to 450. The new facility is called the Auton Building, in recognition of Dr Paul Auton, who wa...

Six designers and suppliers of embedded chipsets have joined the Qt Partner Program. The partners will be cooperating with Qt to facilitate the creation of new solutions for the embedded device market. According to Qt, the new partners – ARM, Boundary Devices, Freescale, Silica, Texas Instruments and Toradex – will make a signi...

Using a company called Fashion Entertainments as a cover, Sony has developed a smartwatch created entirely from e-paper – the display technology used in some e-readers. With 24 selectable patterns, the watch is said to change its appearance as the user moves their wrist, from being blank to showing what seems to be a conventional dia...

European semiconductor sales showed signs of 'encouraging' growth in October, the European Semiconductor Industry Association (ESIA) has said.Sales were up 5.2% from the previous year, reaching $3.2billion. In addition, combined sales from January to October were up 1.5% compared to September and up 9.6% compared to October last year.&n...

Cypress and Spansion have signed a definitive agreement to merge in an all stock transaction said to be worth $4billion. "This merger represents the combination of two smart, profitable, passionately entrepreneurial companies that are number one in their respective memory markets and have successfully diversified into embedded process...

Technology that helps colour blind viewers to differentiate between red and green when watching TV programmes has been made available for integration into consumer set top boxes (STBs). Called Eyeteq, the technology developed by Spectral Edge allows colour blind viewers to see details they previously could not. It is said to have mi...