Articles

Eye On Innovation

By Dr. Udo Ungeheuer Chairman of the Board of Management SCHOTT Mainz, Germany Many people consider the printing press developed here in Mainz, Germany, near the headquarters of SCHOTT, the greatest invention of the last...

Machinery & Equipment Category Winner, "Create the Future" 2007 Design Contest

Cargo Management System Jeremy ConnellBlacksburg, VA Standard truck beds lack the ability to secure loose items easily. The Cargo Management System design employs...

Grand Prize Winner, "Create the Future" 2007 Design Contest

Litroenergy™, a New Light Source Material Steve StarkMPK Co.Champlin, MN A patent-pending light source material, Litroenergy™ contains self-luminous micro particles about...

Medical Category Winner, "Create the Future" 2007 Design Contest

(Winner of an HP Workstation) 3D Ultrasonic Neuronavigation System for Image-Guided Brain Surgery Ajay Mahajan Southern Illinois University Carbondale Murphysboro, IL This...

Consumer Products Category Winner, "Create the Future" 2007 Design Contest

LED Cocoon Tent Stephen Boynton Orem, UT Outdoor camping tents have used the zipper as the solution to opening and closing the tent since the zipper was...

Safety & Security Category Winner, "Create the Future" 2007 Design Contest

Personnel Beacon/Locator for Mine Workers Joseph HollmannSpectral BiopsyKansas City, MO When trapped, miners are instructed to create noise by tapping on surrounding...

Transportation Category Winner, "Create the Future" 2007 Design Contest

Internally Radiating Impulse Structure (IRIS) Engine Corban Tillemann-Dick Tendix LLC Denver, CO The vast majority of internal combustion engines we use for...

Sustainable Technologies Category Winner, "Create the Future" 2007 Design Contest

LEDTRICITY™ Ted BristowCreative ElectricKailua Kona, HI LEDTRICITY™ uses a combination of various electrical principles, unique wiring circuits, and...

Linear Motors and Actuators Meets Automation Needs

Linear motors and actuators are now cost-competitive with ball screws and belt drives and offer distinctly superior agility and bandwidth for advanced positioning applications. New micromotors...

Motion Control Components Lend Hand to Biomedical Applications

The worlds of biomedical and motion control are joining at the hip, with motors, controllers, actuators, and other motion control components becoming key elements in advanced...

Thermographic Imaging Selecting an IR Camera with the Right Detector

The thermographic imaging characteristics of an IR camera are largely determined by its detector assembly. Infrared radiation (IR) is focused onto the camera’s detector...

Taking the Sting Out of Multiprocessor DSP Application Development

Systems engineers face a number of challenges when configuring and programming a complex, heterogeneous multiprocessor system of the type often used in digital signal processing...

Using CompactPCI to Build Rugged Embedded Systems

The task-specific nature of an embedded system application typically defines a narrow scope of performance requirements. But the range of options for achieving those requirements are broad —...

From NASA to NASCAR: Space-Age Technology Finds Its Way into Auto Racing

Although it may not be obvious to the untrained eye, a number of technical innovations developed for aerospace and defense applications have found their way into the sport...

Static vs. Dynamic Detection of Bugs in Safety-Critical Code

In the never-ending quest to produce high-quality software, traditional dynamic testing plays a fundamental role. The weakness of dynamic testing is that it is only as good as the...

Machine Vision and Smart Cameras: Powerful Tools for Machine Builders

Machine builders in this day and age are part of a fast-growing and rapidly changing industry sector. With vast improvements in commercial off-the-shelf products for...

Enhancing Image Clarity in the SWIR

A chromatic or color-corrected lenses for use in the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum have been addressed in literature, textbooks, and industry journals as early as the 18th Century. Many of...

NASA-Inspired Shape-Sensing Fibers Enable Minimally Invasive Surgery

Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) is a new class of surgical procedures in which the operation is performed with surgical instruments inserted through small incisions in the...

Protecting AC Motors From Destructive Shaft Currents

The use of variable-frequency drives (VFDs) to control AC motors has increased dramatically in recent years. In addition to low operating cost and high performance, they save energy. Today,...

Integrated Motor Control Meets Aviation Needs

The trend in aircraft design is toward more efficient brushless DC motors. A integrated motor drive module for brushless DC motors from International Rectifier (El Segundo, CA) reduces the effort of...

Getting on the Right Motion Bus

As modern machines have become more advanced, the complexity involved in motion control has escalated. Today, servos have replaced cams and gears on machines and multiple axis of synchronized motion control have...

Fiber Optic Communications Systems

Communications and, more recently telecommunications, are needs deeply engrained in human history. These needs have significantly evolved over time enabling today’s content-rich (text, music, images and...

CAD Tools: Usability versus Capabilities

CAD software has come a long way in terms of ease of use, interoperability, speed, and capabilities. But there is still a long way to go. We spoke to executives at leading CAD software companies to find...

Z-RAM

In the electronics industry today there are two commonly used high-speed memory types: static RAM (SRAM) and dynamic RAM (DRAM). Traditionally, SRAM embedded memory has been the designer's choice for fast memory, but since a typical SRAM...

Designing COTS Computers for Harsh Environments

The need for commercial off the shelf (COTS) single board computer (SBC) products continues to grow as higher processing, smaller footprints and lower power requirements become more critical. For...

Designing Configurable Air Transport Racks

High-powered embedded computing equipment utilizing the Air Transport Rack (ATR) form factor is playing an ever-larger role in extreme, mission-critical applications in air, land, and sea environments....

Combining Multimode Emissions from Broad Area Laser Diodes into Single-Mode Spots without Feedback

Broad-area laser diodes are the most efficient coherent light sources and are widely used today. The extraordinary efficiency, modulation...

2007: The Year in Technology

In 2007, we focused on the global climate, and as gas prices soared, more novel technologies emerged in the development of alternative fuel and power sources. Once again, electronics and computers became smaller,...