The Star Trek tricorder was a good example of a McGuffin. It did anything needed to support the plot or, in some cases, ...

Is this just a function of cost ... or as something more like a Star Trek tricorder that automatically tells you what you need to know? Is it a combination? This is a good question.

Fifty years after the show aired, Star Trek's fictional tricorder is far from becoming a reality. But a $10 million prize from the XPRIZE Foundation is hoping to motivate inventors to create one ...

While the Star Trek tricorder remains the stuff of science ... body chemistry, and biological function data. Since then, the march of artificial intelligence (AI) has placed booster rockets ...

microspectroscopy and even X-ray fluorescence spectrometry with a device that was designed to resemble a “Star Trek” phaser (though it functions more like a tricorder). The goal has been to ...