New Products: June 2019 Motion Design

Rotary Ball Spline

NB Corporation of America (Hanover Park, IL) released a rotary ball spline that can be used for both rotational and linear motion. Applications include SCARA robots, the...

Snake-Inspired Robot

Researchers have developed a new and improved snake-inspired soft robot that is faster and more precise than its predecessor.

Calculating the Estimated Fatigue Life of a Disc Spring

In discussing fatigue life, it is important to distinguish between disc springs and conical spring washers, as they differ by design and intended usage. Conical spring washers are...

Pneumatics for Mechanical Motion

Employing fluid power to achieve mechanical motion can be implemented via hydraulics using uncompressible liquids or via pneumatics using compressible gasses; typically, air. The latter provides several...

Ultra-Low-Power Chips Enhance Performance of Small Robots

An ultra-low-power hybrid chip inspired by the brain could help give palm-sized robots the ability to collaborate and learn from their experiences. Combined with new generations of...

Model Gives Robots a Better Feel for Object Manipulation

A new learning system improves a robot’s ability to mold materials into target shapes and make predictions about interacting with solid objects and liquids. The system, known as a...

Vision Sensors in Factory Automation

There are a number of ways to extract data from a production line. In factory automation, sensors are used in work cells to gather data for inspection or to trigger other devices. These sensors fall into...

Gear Bearings

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center developed gear bearing technology that combines gear and bearing functions into a single unit that significantly improves gear drives for electrical, internal combustion, and turbine motors. The...

Cross-Training Made Possible by Common Control Platform

EMAG L.L.C. is the U.S. subsidiary of a major German machine tool builder that specializes in machine tools for the production of automotive, off-highway, agricultural, and oil field...

Plastic Bearings Redefine the Wheelchair

For wheelchair users, the feeling of uneven ground can seem all too familiar. Determined to make ride discomfort a thing of the past, Israel-based SoftWheel has completely reinvented the wheel for a...

Monitor Babies in the NICU Without Wires

An interdisciplinary Northwestern University team has developed a pair of soft, flexible wireless sensors that replace the tangle of wire-based sensors that currently monitor babies in hospitals’...

High Tech Comes to Fitness Monitoring

Early wearable fitness monitoring devices were designed to perform a set of valuable but straightforward activities: tallying the number of steps we take daily, recording the number of hours we sleep,...

UCI Biomedical Engineers Develop Wearable Respiration Monitor with Children’s Toy

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine have developed a wearable, disposable respiration monitor that provides high-fidelity readings on a...

Smart Agriculture Sensors: Helping Small Farmers and Positively Impacting Global Issues, Too

Smart agriculture, also known as precision agriculture, allows farmers to maximize yields using minimal resources such as water, fertilizer, and...

Spotting Minute Amounts of Disease in the Bloodstream

The difficulty in spotting minute amounts of disease circulating in the bloodstream has proven a stumbling block in the detection and treatment of cancers that advance stealthily with few...

Diagnose Lithium Batteries

Batteries with metallic lithium anodes offer enhanced efficiency compared to conventional lithium-ion batteries because of their higher capacity. However, safety concerns and a short lifespan stand in the way. To...

Stretchable Interlaced-Nanowire Film for Ultraviolet Photodetectors with High Response Speed

Stretchable electronics, which can be stretched, deformed and wrapped onto nonplanar curved surfaces, have attracted much attraction due to their...

A Sensor that Fits Like a Glove

We recently had a discussion with Sri Peruvemba, VP of Strategy at BeBop Sensors (Berkeley, CA), about the technology and applications for their two-dimensional fabric sensor material. I started by asking Sri...

New Products: June 2019 Sensor Technology

Extreme Environment Displacement Sensors and Systems

The Measuring Division of Kaman Precision Products, Inc (Colorado Springs, CO) announces the availability of its Extreme Environment...

When You Need a Machine for Breathing, You’d Better Have Accurate Sensors

Medical ventilation technology has come far since the original iron lung was first used more than 90 years ago. Using negative pressure to ventilate, the patient was...

3D Printable Sensors Disposed of Without Contaminating the Environment

Simon Fraser University and Swiss researchers are developing an eco-friendly, 3D printable solution for producing wireless Internet-of-Things (IoT) sensors that can be...

Graphene-Based Technology for Wearable Health Monitoring

Graphene Flagship partner ICFO, based in Barcelona, Spain is developing graphene-based prototypes that aim to turn mobile phones into life saving devices. The first of these will allow...

New Electromyography Biofeedback Device

Anew electromyography biofeedback device that is wearable and connects to novel smartphone games may offer people with incomplete paraplegia a more affordable, self-controllable therapy to enhance...

Cryogenic Cam Butterfly Valve

Typical butterfly valves cannot seal at both ambient and cryogenic temperatures. At cryogenic temperatures, valves grow and shrink, changing critical dimensions such as distance between the disc and seat....

Vascular Injury Shunt

Extremity vascular injury results in bleeding and lack of blood flow beyond the site of vessel disruption (ischemia). Priorities when this occurs include hemorrhage control, management of life-threatening injuries, and...

Products of Tomorrow: June 2019

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...

Single-Photon Detector for Potential Encryption and Sensing

Light is widely used for communications, carrying phone conversations and video signals through fiber optic cables around the world in pulses composed of many photons. Single...

Graphene Coating Takes Oxygen Out of Lithium Battery Fires

Lithium batteries allow electric vehicles to travel several hundred miles on one charge. Their capacity for energy storage is well known — so is their tendency to occasionally...

Modular Blocks Enable Plug-and-Play Diagnostic Devices

Over the past decade, many researchers have been working on small, portable diagnostic devices based on chemical reactions that occur on paper strips. Many of these tests make use of...

Wearable Ultrasound Patch Monitors Blood Pressure

Wearable devices have been limited to sensing signals either on the surface of the skin or right beneath it. A new wearable ultrasound patch non-invasively monitors blood pressure in arteries...

Programming Light on a Chip

Microwave signals are ubiquitous in wireless communications but interact too weakly with photons. A technique was developed to fabricate high-performance optical microstructures using lithium niobate, a material...

New on the Market: June 2019

Code Generator

dSPACE, Wixom, MI, offers Version 4.4 of TargetLink code generator software that features controller modeling with MATLAB^® code from MathWorks. It describes algorithms and...

Generating Electrical Power from Waste Heat

Directly converting electrical power to heat is easy; however, converting heat into electrical power is not as easy. To address this issue, a tiny silicon-based device was developed that can...

Joining Gun Bonds Metal and Plastic in Seconds

The connection of plastics and metals poses a challenge due to the different physical properties of the two materials. All conventional joining options, such as bonds using adhesives or rivets,...

Smart, Soft, Back Orthosis Uses Real-Time Motion Detection

Back pain is inevitable with constrained posture over a number of hours. Permanent damage such as premature spine wear is not uncommon in people who do not adopt proper ergonomic...

One-Pot Bioconversion of Distiller’s Grains to Advanced Biofuels

Increase in bioethanol production throughout the US has led to an increase in the process coproduct — distiller’s grains with solubles (DGS). DGS can be used to feed...

5 Ws of the Insulin-Delivery Pill

Who

Millions of people worldwide with type 1 diabetes.

Eliminating Corrosion Extends Life of Lightweight Batteries

Metal-air batteries are one of the lightest and most compact types of batteries but when not in use, they degrade quickly, as corrosion eats away at their metal electrodes. While...

Full-Spectrum Infrasonic Stethoscope for Screening Heart, Carotid Artery, and Lung-Related Diseases

Microphones and stethoscopes are regularly used by physicians to detect sounds when monitoring physiological conditions. These monitors are...

Rotary Electrical Contact

Researchers have developed a fundamentally new type of rotary electrical contact that addresses the two limitations of conventional brush/slip ring technology: 1) short operating lifetime due to sliding-contact...

Direct-Write Quantum Calligraphy in Monolayer Semiconductors

In contrast with conventional light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that emit billions of photons simultaneously to form a steady stream of light, a single photon emitter (SPE) generates...

Retinas to Roadways: The Evolution of Optical Coherence Technology

Insight Photonic Solutions
Lafayette, CO
www.sweptlaser.com

A driver’s ability to see and avoid other vehicles is essential to safe driving. The same is true...

Ingestible, Expanding Pill Monitors the Stomach for Up to a Month

An ingestible pill was developed that, upon reaching the stomach, quickly swells to the size of a soft, squishy ping-pong ball big enough to stay in the stomach for an...

Electroceutical Bandages Destroy Bacteria

Used since 2013, electroceutical bandages — which use electrical impulses to treat medical issues — kill bacteria around a wound, allowing wounds to heal faster. In addition, if infection is...

Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE) of Structures Using Transient and Lock-in Thermography

Researchers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center improved their Flash Thermography capabilities by incorporating transient and lock-in thermography. By...

Graphene-Silicon Devices for Optoelectronics Applications

Silicon is a naturally occurring material commonly used as a semiconductor in electronic devices; however, researchers have exhausted the potential of devices with semiconductors made...

Safety Analysis: The Key to a Single-Pass ISO26262 Random Fault Workflow

Advanced driver-assistance systems and autonomous drive technologies increase the complexity of automotive integrated circuits (ICs), making it harder to ensure that...

Infrared Light-Focusing Platform

Researchers have integrated two technologies widely used in applications such as optical communications, bio-imaging, and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) systems to create a new infrared light-focusing...

Q&A: 3D-Printed Hydrogel Blocks Can Aid Robotics and Diagnostics

Ian Y. Wong, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Engineering, Molecular Pharmacology, Physiology and Biotechnology at Brown University in Providence, RI. He and colleagues have...

Impact-Resistant Battery Electrolyte Solidifies When Hit

Lithium-ion batteries commonly used in consumer electronics are notorious for bursting into flame when damaged or improperly packaged. Inspired by the unusual behavior of some liquids...

Stretchable, Rubbery Semiconductors

Researchers have created stretchable, rubbery semiconductors including rubbery integrated electronics, logic circuits, and arrayed sensory skins fully based on rubber materials. The semiconductors have...

Running an LED in Reverse Could Cool Future Computers

Researchers devised a method in which running a light emitting diode (LED) with electrodes reversed was able to cool another device nanometers away. They harnessed the chemical potential...

Facility Focus: U.S. Army Aeromedical Research Laboratory

In October 1962, the U.S. Army Aeromedical Research Unit was established with a goal of providing specialized medical and physiological support to help close the gap between Army...

Key Factors to Consider When Designing a Smart Factory

In recent years, the emergence of Industry 4.0 has been steadily transforming the manufacturing sector into an ultra-high-tech industry. Innovative smart technologies such as robotics,...

Product of the Month: June 2019 Tech Briefs

Maplesoft™, Waterloo, ON, Canada, released Maple™ 2019 software that analyzes, explores, visualizes, and solves math problems. It includes improvements to core functionality such as...

Energy-Efficient ‘SlothBot’ Moves Only When It Has To

While robots like the WildCat from Boston Dynamics reach speeds of just under 20 miles an hour, engineers from Georgia Tech have gone with a decidedly slower approach.

A Washable Sensor Can Be Woven into Material

Researchers at University of British Columbia Okanagan’s School of Engineering have developed a low-cost sensor that can be interlaced into textiles and composite materials. While the...

Building Animal-Inspired Sensors into the Shells of Aircraft, Cars

What if drones and self-driving cars had the tingling “spidey senses” of Spider-Man? They might actually detect and avoid objects better because they would process...

Breakthrough in Stretchable Electronics

With a wide range of healthcare, energy, and military applications, stretchable electronics are valued for their ability to be compressed, twisted and conformed to uneven surfaces without losing...

Increase Processing Capacity Without Adding Transistors

Computers and similar electronic devices have gotten faster and smaller over the decades as computer-chip makers have learned how to shrink individual transistors. Scientists’...

An ‘Active’ Machine-Vision Tool Adds Intelligence to Traffic Management

A new machine-vision tool extracts and reports valuable driving data from the standard traffic cameras already in place.

Here's an Idea: Candy

In this episode of Here's an Idea, we explore how candy manufacturers large and small turn to technology to support their newest, sweetest ideas.

Clean Fuel Cells Could Be Cheap Enough to Replace Gas Engines in Vehicles

Advancements in zero-emission fuel cells could make the technology cheap enough to replace traditional gasoline engines in vehicles, according to researchers at...

Winter Could Pose Solar Farm ‘Ramping’ Problem for Power Grid

By adding utility-scale solar farms throughout New York state, summer electricity demand from conventional sources could be reduced by up to 9.6% in some places. But...

Release of Solar Panel Dataset Helps Cities Make Power Grids Safer and More Reliable

Solar power researchers have traditionally only used the power measurements from single residential solar photovoltaic (PV) systems to estimate the...

Flexible Generators Turn Movement into Energy

Wearable devices that harvest energy from movement are not a new idea, but a material created at Rice University may make them more practical.

Answering Your Questions: What are New Missions for Military UAVs?

An industry expert tells a Tech Briefs reader what's over the next hill regarding military UAVs.

Engineers Develop Concept for Hybrid Heavy-Duty Trucks

Heavy-duty trucks, such as the 18-wheelers that transport many of the world's goods from farm or factory to market, are virtually all powered by diesel engines. They account for a...

Next-Generation, Low-Cost Stop Sign Improves Driver Safety

It's dark on the back road as a motorist speeds toward the intersection. Up ahead, the stop sign blends with the night and in seconds a deadly crash occurs. According to the U.S....

How to Produce More Clean Water? Resemble the Rose.

A new water purifier works better because it takes the shape of the rose.

LASER World of PHOTONICS 2019

The bi-annual Laser World of Photonics exhibition begins today.

From LASER World of PHOTONICS 2019: Light as the Key to Global Sustainability

The increased use of photonics has the potential to reduce CO2 emissions — by 3-billion tons.

LASER World of PHOTONICS, Day 2: Bigger is Better

Many vendors at this year's event made their presence known with mega-sized booths.

Tool Tells Robots Where Nearby Humans are Headed

On a factory floor, robots are programmed to stop momentarily if a person passes by. The robot often freezes in place long before a person crosses its path. While robots can predict where...

LASER World of PHOTONICS, Day 3 — Unusual Exhibits

Editor Bruce A. Bennett takes us through the unusual — and completely unexpected —at this year's LASER World of Photonics.

At Sensors Expo: SST Wireless on a 'Journey of Innovation'

The key to IoT implementation: Democratizing big data, says SST's Christopher Chong.

New at Sensors Expo: Image-Quality LiDAR for Autonomous Vehicles

At Sensors Expo in San Jose, Innovusion (Los Altos, CA) debuted the Cheetah high-resolution, image-grade LiDAR system with long-distance capability.