Inside the Blueprint

Berlin sign workshop Heerlein Werbetechnik turns a digital file into graphics printed directly onto the wall instead of onto wallpaper. The machine, which appears to be a wallPen, is a German-built mobile UV printer that uses laser sensors to follow the wall's surface, cures its ink instantly and prints up to 4 metres high with no limit on width.

NASA's Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3), a microwave-sized CubeSat with no rocket propellant, spent nearly two years in orbit testing whether new carbon fiber booms could hold open an 80-square-meter sail pushed by sunlight. The sail deployed in August 2024, meeting the mission's main goal, but a bent boom and a persistent spin meant the team never steered it before NASA decommissioned the spacecraft in March 2026. NASA has since hired Opterus to build the deployment system for a sail about 20 times larger, due for delivery in early 2028.

China has put its first intelligent grain-leveling robot to work at a Sinograin depot in Beijing, taking over one of the dustiest, most exhausting jobs in grain storage. Spiral-bladed wheels carry it across loose grain without sinking, while laser radars and a central route planner keep a team of robots from colliding. Three robots can level a 1,400-square-metre granary in under a day, a job that took three workers three days.

Seattle-based Overland AI has won a $20 million contract under the US Army's Engineer Autonomous Breaching Capability initiative, which aims to use robots to clear obstacles and minefields so fewer combat engineers are exposed to enemy fire. The company's flagship ULTRA vehicle carries 1,000 pounds at up to 35 mph with no driver, and at an exercise in Morocco this spring it fired a line charge to clear a wire obstacle.