As the holidays fade and the New Year unfolds, it’s back to business for most of us. For NASA Tech Briefs, that includes a bunch of trade shows and conferences our editors will attend over the next few months.

One show I plan to attend is the Pacific Design & Manufacturing Show, taking place at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, Calif., from February 9 through 11. The show will feature the latest design and manufacturing solutions from hundreds of companies. The diverse array of products and services include adhesives, CAD/CAM/CAE software and services, electrical and electronic components, fluid handling media and controls, instruments and controls, materials, mechanical components, motors and motion controls, testing and inspection products and services, and valves, switches, and controls.

No less than seven other shows are co-located with the Pacific Design & Manufacturing Show. Three of the more significant shows are the Medical Design & Manufacturing Show West, Electronics West, and Green Manufacturing Expo. The Medical Design & Manufacturing Show West and Green Manufacturing Expo represent the burgeoning fields of medical technology and “green” technology – sectors that held their own during the economic downturn and are increasingly important to design engineers.

In coming weeks, I hope to get more details on some of the products and technologies being shown. If your company plans to exhibit, drop me a line and let me know what you’ll be showing. Hopefully, we can meet during the show to discuss what’s new and exciting.

One of the world’s leading manufacturers of cars and light trucks, Toyota, is making inroads into the area of brain machine interface (BMI) technology. Toyota has developed a brain wave control that analyzes the brain waves of a wheelchair driver in as little as 125 milliseconds, as opposed to several seconds with existing technologies. Brainwave results are displayed on a panel so quickly that drivers do not sense any delay.

The system has the capacity to adjust itself to each individual driver’s characteristics, and thus is able to improve the efficiency with which it senses the driver’s commands. The system has achieved a 95 percent accuracy rate.

Toyota plans to utilize the technology in applications centered on medicine and nursing care management. The system is expected to help the elderly and physically handicapped maneuver wheelchairs and be particularly useful in rehabilitative medicine.

So far, Toyota has not stated whether the technology will eventually be adapted to drivers of motor vehicles. I can envision brain wave technology helping drivers with physical handicaps control vehicles. However, I doubt whether the technology would – or should be – available to the everyday driver.

Allowing the brain waves of a person prone to “road rage” or careless driving habits control the actions of a vehicle weighing several tons is not a pleasant thought.

Case New Holland (CNH, Amsterdam, the Netherlands) has lessened the level of steering noise in the cabs of its 821 Case brand and LW190 brand wheel loaders by utilizing Char-Lynn Series 20 steering control unit from Eaton Hydraulics (Eden Prairie, MN). The cab noise issue was great enough to hold the assembly line while the matter was investigated. Researchers at Eaton tested several units to isolate the problem and constructed working prototypes with a lower decibel output.

Finding a sound solution depended on measuring the level of noise and the feel of the existing steering unit, comparing those measurements to acceptable noise ratings, and incorporating results into a product redesign. Eaton was able to produce quieter steering units within nine working days, assuring the assembly line stoppage was minimal.View this technology here.

A joint effort between University of Washington (Seattle, WA) and Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, OH) researchers has revealed gyroscope-like structures in tobacco horn moth antennae that could lead to mechanical equivalents for miniature flying robots. The discovery allows the researchers to understand neural properties employing methods typically used to analyze electronic circuits, and the work also could be adapted in the development of robotic insects to test the understanding of flight itself.

“We are really good at building gyros for a 747 airplane, but if we want to make autonomous flying machines the size of a bird or smaller, we will need to engineer a version of the vibrating antennae. This information has the potential to help us design gyro-like stabilization capabilities for a small flying robot,” said Case biologist Mark Willis, who worked on the project.

Click here for the full story. View a video of the moth’s flight here .