Sound-Off: Will Vehicles Go from Metal to Plastic?

A reader asks: "In the next 5 years, which areas of the vehicle will see a conversion from metal to plastic?" Tech Briefs invites you to share your thoughts and “Sound Off!”

Drones Spot Gas Leaks From the Sky

ANAHEIM, CA. During this year’s SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing 2017 conference, panelists from industry, academia, and government demonstrated how miniaturized sensing platforms, and the...

Self-Assembling, Reversible, Reagentless Biosensor

Recognition-based biosensors capable of specifically detecting chemicals, toxins, and bio-agents in their environment are of increasing importance. An important goal in biosensor evolution...

New Products: June 2017 Sensor Technology

The following companies will be exhibiting at Sensors Expo & Conference 2017. The event, held in the San Jose, CA-based McEnery Convention Center, runs from June 27-29.

MEMS Move Wearables Beyond Touch Interfaces

We use touch, the dominant user interface for years, to tap keyboards on laptops and tablets, to communicate with our car’s portable GPS, and to text friends and take photos from our...

Chip-Based Power Measurement Sensor

Phone signals spend at least some time traveling over fiber-optic cables. To ensure that the information gets where it needs to go, and to help researchers find better ways to ferry this information...

Space Radiation Detector with Spherical Geometry

NASA’s Glenn Research Center has developed and patented the Compact Full-Field Ion Detector System (CFIDS), a radiation particle detection system that provides information on the kinetic...

Sensors’ Role Evolves as New Wearables Emerge

Microelectromechanical system (MEMS)-based components, such as sensors and actuators, began penetrating the wearable products market about a decade ago, when the first accelerometers replaced...

3D Printing Enables Customized Magnets

Polymer-bonded magnets are valuable for many sensor applications that require the production of unique and reproducible field profiles, not necessarily fields with the highest strength.

Digital Beamforming Interferometry

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center has developed a new radar approach that uses a single phased array antenna and a single-pass configuration to generate interferograms, known as Digital Beamforming...

Chain Drive Dust Conveyer

The Mars 2020 coring drill will generate a significant amount of dust and debris (known as fines) due to the volume of milled material displaced by the corer's annulus. These cuttings must be removed to ensure that...

Autonomous Combustion-Powered Hopping Robot

Robots are conventionally made mobile by rolling on wheels; however, wheeled robots have limited ability to traverse large obstacles. Obstacles much taller than the robot's wheels can prevent...

Fabrication of BSA 14-23 Superhydrophobic Sponges as Efficient Oil and Organic Liquid Absorbents

Oil spills have become an environmental problem due to the growth of offshore oil exploration, production, and transportation. There are...

Suspended Platform Improves Efficiency in Large-Scale Manufacturing

The Flying Carpet is a platform of any shape, size, or material that is suspended by a four-point cable system. The platform can serve as a movable scaffolding and worker...

Products of Tomorrow: June 2017

This column presents technologies that have applications in commercial areas, possibly creating the products of tomorrow. To learn more about each technology, see the contact information provided for that...

Combination Structural Support and Thermal Protection System

NASA's Langley Research Center has developed a system that provides both structural support and protection attributes in a failsafe manner. This innovation incorporates the use of...

Recovering Metals from Electronic Waste

End-of-life electronic devices such as smartphones, computers, televisions, and other electronics contain significant amounts of valuable metals including base metals (zinc, tin, lead, nickel, and...

Composite Insulated Conductor

NASA's Langley Research Center has developed a new class of polyimide composite electrical insulation materials for wires, cable, and bus pipe. These new insulation materials have been shown to withstand a...

Solder Bond Packaging for High-Voltage Pulsed Power Devices

The huge demand for switching components exceeding silicon's (Si) current density limitation of 200 A/cm² has pushed the enhancement of alternative semiconductor...

Omnidirectional Mobile Robot with Two Moving Parts

SIMbot is an updated version of the ballbot, an elegantly simple robot whose tall, thin body moves on top of a sphere slightly smaller than a bowling ball. SIMbot features a motor with just...

Interactive Robot Control System and Method of Use

Researchers at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC), in collaboration with General Motors and Oceaneering, have designed a state-of-the-art, highly dexterous, humanoid robot: Robonaut 2 (R2)....

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

In 1928, physics professor Ernest O. Lawrence left his faculty position at Yale University for a job at the University of California's Berkeley campus. While at Berkeley, Lawrence invented a unique...

Multifunctional Platelet Composites for Tin Whisker Mitigation

To comply with the Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive, pure tin is replacing lead-tin alloys in commercial electronic devices. Unfortunately, tin can grow...

Virtual Fabrication and Assembly Documentation

Over the years, the term “virtual” has become associated with many different domains. Virtual machines are now commonplace as a substitute for physical laptops or desktops, allowing...

Chip-Sized Terahertz Modulator for Faster Data Transmission

Tufts University engineers have invented a chip-sized, high-speed modulator that operates at terahertz (THz) frequencies at room temperature and at low voltages without consuming DC...

Integrated High-Speed Torque Control System for a Robotic Joint

Researchers at the NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC), in collaboration with General Motors and Oceaneering, have designed a state-of-the-art, highly dexterous, humanoid robot:...

Developing a Satellite-Based Autonomous Vehicle Control System

The rapid rise of global interest in the field of autonomous driving is ushering in a new era of automobiles. With many vehicles already offering autonomous preventative safety...

Product of the Month: June 2017

Phoenix Contact, Middletown, PA, introduced VL2 1000 industrial PCs equipped with Intel^® Atom™ Bay Trail processors that are available as box or panel PCs. The VL2 1000 includes a choice...

Wearable Robotic System for Minimally Invasive Surgery

Researchers developed a wearable robotic system for minimally invasive surgery (also known as keyhole surgery) that will offer surgeons natural and dexterous movement, as well as the...

Technique Provides Security for Multi-Robot Systems

Multi-robot systems deployed in real-world applications are exposed to the same issues that computer systems face. A cybersecurity attack on a robot has the consequences of an attack on a...

Carbon Fiber and Fiber Metal Laminate Composites Reinforced with Metallic Glass

Carbon fiber (CF) and carbon fiber composites have gained widespread use in recent years due to their unique combination of high strength and...

Space Vehicle Heat Shield Having Edgewise Strips of Ablative Material

An alternate heat shield concept for the Orion space vehicle is to use interlocking blocks of Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator (PICA). The blocks are independent from...

Wire Sensors Detect Dangerous Conditions in the Clouds

Spinoff is NASA's annual publication featuring successfully commercialized NASA technology. This commercialization has contributed to the development of products and services in the...

Mechanically Strong, Thermally Stable, and Electrically Conductive Nanocomposite Structure and Method of Fabricating Same

NASA's Langley Research Center has developed a method for producing multifunctional, structural, thermally stable...

Micro Acoustic Resonant Chambers for Heating/Agitating/Mixing (MARCHAM)

To measure organics in a fluid sample, one either has to bring the sample in the form of a colloid to the instrument, or extract the organics from the sample and bring...

How Metal 3D Printing is Redefining Part Design

It's one of the basic rules of manufacturing: As part complexity increases, so do machining and assembly costs. But what if there were a different way to produce metal parts — one with fewer...

High-Speed Particle Image Velocimetry

Particle flow fields of high particle concentration are found in many commercial applications, including chemical processing, energy conversion, pharmaceutical processing, food processing, and biomedical...

Improved Cast Stainless Steel Alloys

At high temperatures, currently available cast stainless steel alloys used for engine component applications do not have the long-term stability of their original castings, and are lacking in their...

Linear Rope Brake System for Aerial Delivery

There are instances when items (e.g., supplies) need to be lowered from an aerial vehicle to the ground. For example, the United States military often lowers supplies from a rotary winged aircraft...

Origami-Inspired Robot Fits in Tight Spaces

Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) were inspired by origami when they developed the Pop-Up Flat Folding Explorer Robot (PUFFER). Its lightweight design — which can hitch a ride...

New Products: June 2017 Motion Design

Load Adaptor

Zero-Max (Plymouth, MN) introduced the Model 650 Overhung Load Adaptor that's designed to provide more radial and axial load support for hydraulic motors and pumps. The SAE B Model...

Software Interface Simplifies Robot Control

The traditional interface for remotely operating robots works well for roboticists. They use a computer screen and mouse to independently control six degrees of freedom, turning three virtual rings...

Composite C-Channel Incrementally Adjustable Fluid Control System

The ability to selectively adjust levels and flow rates in fluid control systems is a fundamental aspect of dredged material and fluid management, and necessary to numerous...

Sizing and Selecting Linear Motion Systems

Virtually all manufacturing processes incorporate some type of linear motion. A common mistake that designers make when sizing and selecting linear motion systems is to overlook critical application...

Oil Sheer Clutch Cuts Downtime for Metal Stamping Press

In the metal stamping business, precision, repeatability, and uptime are key. But stamping accuracy suffers when improper tension on the coil feeders incorrectly supplies metal to the...

Piezo Technology in Pneumatic Valves

Pneumatic valves made with piezo technology offer many advantages. They are small, lightweight, extremely precise, durable, fast, and save energy. Piezo valves do not need energy to maintain a switching...

Adding Simple Vision Systems to Collaborative Robots

Adding vision to a collaborative robot can open a world of possibilities for automation applications. With a vision system, a robot can inspect parts, check specific features of a part,...

Adam Sidor, NASA Research Fellow, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA

Thermal Protection Systems (TPS) — heatshields — form the outer surface of spacecraft and provide protection as the vehicle plunges through planetary...

Assessing brain bleeding in head injuries with new device

In a clinical trial conducted among adults in 11 hospitals, researchers have shown that a hand-held EEG device approved in 2016 by the U.S. FDA that is commercially available can...

Giant shipworm could reveal clues about human medicine, bacterial infections

Northeastern professor Daniel Distel and his colleagues have discovered a dark, slithering 4-foot-long creature that dwells in the foul mud of a remote lagoon in...

New handheld fiber-optic probe brings endoscopic diagnosis of cancer closer to clinic

In an important step toward endoscopic diagnosis of cancer, researchers have developed a handheld fiber-optic probe that can be used to perform multiple...

Cells grow more naturally in 'spaghetti'

The usual way of cultivating cells is to use a flat laboratory dish of glass. However, inside a human body, the cells do not grow on a flat surface but rather in three dimensions. This has lead...

Wearable System Guides Visually Impaired Users

A new wearable system from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will help blind users navigate through indoor environments.

Bringing Bioprinting to Life

A team from Northwestern University created bioprosthetic ovaries that ultimately led to the restoration of hormone production and fertility in mice.

‘Creating the Future’: Water Purifier Requires Only Sunlight

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 780 million people do not have access to clean water sources. The inventor of a water-purification technology...

Sound-Off: How Can Organizations Ensure Security in the Cloud?

A reader asks: "How can organizations that use cloud services maintain security of customer data?" See our expert's response — and write one of your own.

One Plug-In Sensor Does Work of Many

Researchers have developed a sensor package that monitors multiple phenomena in a room using machine-learning techniques. The prototype contained 19 different sensor channels, including sensors that...

Researchers control adhesive material remotely with light

Adhesive mechanisms in the natural world, as used by geckos and other animals when they walk upside down on the ceiling, have many advantages. They are strongly adhesive – without...

‘Most stretchable 3D printable elastomer’ in the world

Due to its excellent material properties of elasticity, resilience, and electrical and thermal insulation, elastomers have been used in a myriad of applications. They are especially...

‘Instantly Rechargeable’ Battery Drives New Electric Car Possibilities

A new battery system may someday allow drivers to recharge their cars as quickly and easily as filling up a gas tank.

Sound-Off: 'Big Data' Best Practices

There was a time when the R&D powertrain group at Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) would log up to 500 GB of data per day. How do you sift through such a large number of files? Anjelica Warren, Product...

Super-Strong 'Glassy Carbon' is Elastic and Electric

A new compressed form of glassy carbon opens up possibilities for applications requiring low weight and high strength — from aerospace parts to football helmets.

Will the "ifbattery" catch on?

A new story on TechBriefs.com this week featured an interview with Purdue University's John Cushman. The professor's "ifbattery" system may someday allow drivers to recharge their cars as quickly and easily as...

‘Solar Paint’ Produces Energy from Sunlight

A team from Australia’s RMIT University created a “solar paint” that generates its own energy. The sunlight-absorbing substance absorbs and splits water atoms, resulting in hydrogen that...

Sound-Off: How Does Connectivity Improve Vehicle Design?

Vehicle connectivity enables suppliers and manufacturers to gather new kinds of customer-specific information. See how automotive OEMs — and construction equipment makers like...

Will solar paint catch on?

In today's lead INSIDER story, researcher Kourosh Kalantar-zadeh said of his "solar paint": "It will be widespread. It is a technology that can shift the energy economy to a hydrogen economy. This disruptive...

Crawling Robot is Powered by Moisture

Using an off-the-shelf camera flash, researchers at Jilin University, China, turned an ordinary sheet of graphene oxide into a material that bends when exposed to moisture. They then used this...

Self-Learning Robot Hands Adapt to Grasp Objects

A new grasp system with robotic hands works without previously knowing the characteristics of objects. The system, which learns by trial and error, was developed by researchers at...

3D Printed Tensegrity Object Can Change Shape

A team of researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology has developed a way to use 3D printers to create objects capable of shape change. The objects use tensegrity, a structural...

New at Sensors Expo: IoT Platform Collects Data via Bluetooth

Fujitsu Components America released its enhanced BlueBrain Sensor-Based IoT System Platform at the 2017 Sensors Expo & Conference, hosted in San Jose, CA. The BlueBrain...

Handheld Laser Probe Detects Cancer in Real Time

An optical probe that detects cancerous brain cells in real time is impressive enough. Scientists in Montreal say they’ve developed one that is “infallible.”