Features

Choosing the Right Brake for Robotic Applications

Industrial robots play an essential role in manufacturing, from assembly, to pick-and-place, to packaging. One of the major risks of robotics — and what OEMs seek to mitigate — is...

Industrial Rotary Encoders: Selecting the Right Device for Your Application

Rotary encoders play important roles in motion control and industrial automation systems, providing control systems with information about the motion of motor shafts,...

Cobots and Industrial Robots: Choose the Right Robot for the Job

Automating manufacturing processes is a complex issue, with no one-size-fits-all solution. Robots range from insect-like microrobots to industrial robots powerful enough to move...

New on the Market: April 2018

Polarization Camera Lucid Vision Labs, Richmond, BC, Canada, announced the 5-megapixel Phoenix polarization camera that can be used to detect stress or defects in manufacturing of materials such as plastic, glass,...

Circuit Protection Challenges for Battery Management Systems

The market for higher-voltage automotive systems is expanding. The number of electric vehicles that use battery-powered drive systems having voltage equal to or higher than 48V is...

Sandia National Laboratories

Sandia National Laboratories — headquartered in Albuquerque, MN, with a principal lab in Livermore, CA — is operated and managed by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC (a wholly owned...

Products of Tomorrow

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 innovation.

5 Ws of the iQ Portable Scanner

Who Doctors, nurses, hospitals, paramedics, and other healthcare professionals; and consumers.

Demolition Probe Gives Construction Workers a Break

Initially designed for use on the Moon, the Electro-Hydraulic Fracturing system — developed at Auburn University with NASA funding — relies upon short, high-pulse power created by...

Q&A: Dr. Abhaya Datye Creates a More Powerful Emission-Control Catalyst

Researchers at Washington State University, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and the University of New Mexico have created a catalyst capable of reducing pollutants...

Product of the Month

Product of the Month Opto 22, Temecula, CA, introduced the groov EPIC® system that incorporates into one unit everything needed to connect and control field and operational devices and data through on-premises IT...

New Products

Optical Design Software Lambda Research Corporation (Littleton, MA) announced the release of TracePro 7.8.3 and the Early Visibility release of its flagship TracePro software. Some of the new features and enhancements in TracePro...

New Products

Digital Temperature Sensors The ProSense® ETS series digital temperature sensors from Automation Direct (Cumming, GA) now include a precision RTD sensing element, measuring electronics, and process fitting, combined in a single...

How to Secure Wireless Sensor Networks

The Internet of Things (IoT) promises to integrate all sorts of devices, near and far, into a connected web. This web is forecast to see exponential growth. But in the rush for companies to maximize their...

Understanding Network Topology

Sensor networks are the backbone of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Industry 4.0. They provide the data that drives automated systems: both feedback for control loops and status information for all of the...

Sensor Networks — The Platform for a Connected Farm

Farming has not been untouched by the IoT revolution. The relationships among field conditions, crops, and strategies for planting, irrigating, and harvesting are complex, yet vital for the...

Light-Induced Oxidation Cleans Air, Surfaces, and Clothes

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

Q&A: N.C. State's Dr. Jingyan Dong Develops New Way to Directly Print Metal Circuits

Researchers from NC State have developed a new technique for directly printing metal circuits, creating flexible, stretchable electronics. The technique can...

New on the Market: March 2018

Product of the Month Keysight Technologies, Santa Rosa, CA, introduced the PathWave software platform that integrates design, test, measurement, and analysis to enable product development from concept to...

Understanding the New Optical Data Interface

In October of 2017 the AXIe Consortium, VITA trade association, and six companies endorsed a new optical interface standard named Optical Data Interface, or ODI for short. The six companies were...

Space Imaging

The term Space Imaging covers a wide variety of mission types and technologies.

Learn to Trust Your Infrared Camera

It's tough to trust measurements from instruments when you don't have a clear understanding of how their sensitivity and accuracy are derived, and many times infrared cameras fall in this category. In...

Trends in Thermal Imaging

Most manufacturers of uncooled amorphous silicon (AS) and vanadium oxide (VOx) microbolometer focal plane array (FPA) products have long been producing imaging devices with 17 μm pixel-pitch arrays. Currently, 320 ×...

Hunting New Mining Deposits with Hyperspectral Imaging

How much gold remains to be mined on Earth? How about the lesser-known element, indium, necessary for computer and smartphone displays? With known sources of some essential metals facing...

Pros & Cons of Advanced Lightweighting Materials

Learn how advanced materials are creating high-efficiency engines, better powertrains, and lighter components.

ADAS Design – Specialized Chipsets Do the Job

Advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) are improving driver and pedestrian safety, providing vehicle capabilities such as pedestrian detection, lane departure warnings, collision avoidance, and...

Hyperspectral Imaging – Teaching Robots to See

Hyperspectral imaging is an exciting and promising new technology. When combined with modern machine learning software and actuators such as robots, air-jets, or flippers, hyperspectral imaging...

Technological Advances, and How Structural Adhesives Support Manufacturing

Exciting new technological innovations are making the planet cleaner, people healthier, food more plentiful, transportation speedier, communication more accessible, and...

Facility Focus: Argonne National Laboratory

Located in Argonne, IL, Argonne National Laboratory (ARL) is a multidisciplinary science and engineering research center. Born out of the University of Chicago’s work on the Manhattan Project in the...