Features

Custom Brakes Meet the Challenges of Gearless Motor Elevators

A manufacturer of low and high-rise elevators faced a challenge when customers began calling for a flexible elevator to meet the needs of the growing mid-rise, mixed-use building...

New Products

Variable Frequency Drives Through a new partnership, variable frequency drives (VFDs) from American Control Electronics (South Beloit, IL) will now be offered as a product add-on to Brother Gearmotors’ portfolio of...

Darmindra Arumugam, Senior Research Technologist, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA

In outdoor locations, firefighters and emergency responders can use GPS technology to track one another. Indoor environments like high-rises and...

High-Power Fiber Lasers

High-power (multi-kW) fiber lasers are revolutionizing industrial materials processing markets by offering an unmatched combination of performance, reliability, and cost advantages. For example, in sheet metal cutting...

Finding the Right Chip-on-Tip Camera Technology

You have a great idea that could potentially revolutionize your industry: a new surgical technique, diagnostic solution, or inspection system. You already know getting there will require the...

Thermal Imaging: How Does It Work?

By detecting very subtle temperature differences of everything in view, infrared technology reveals what otherwise would be invisible to the naked eye.

New Products

Near Eye Displays Test System A new test system from Gamma Scientific (San Diego, CA) offers high spatial resolution color and contrast measurements for near eye displays (NED), such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality...

Six Questions About Today's Camera Market

Although camera components like CCD and infrared sensors have reached a level of maturity, imaging features continue to evolve. Analysts from the San Francisco, CA-based business consulting firm Grand...

Autonomous Driving — In a ‘Flash’

By combining CMOS technology with avalanche photodiodes, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems IMS (Duisburg, Germany) have developed a potentially...

ViDAR Optical Radar Provides New Maritime Search Capability

ViDAR, developed by Sentient Vision Systems in Melbourne Australia, provides autonomous, real-time, wide-area search capability, optically, from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or...

Infrared Cameras Support Advanced 3D Printing Efforts

Additive manufacturing (AM), also known as 3D printing, is quite literally one of the most innovative technologies revolutionizing manufacturing today, in terms of both industry “buzz”...

CERTIFICATES AND SIGNATURES: How to Ensure Authentication in the IoT

On October 21, 2016, the Internet saw a significant distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, conducted via a botnet comprising many co-opted Internet-connected devices....

A New Clinical Challenge: Making Sense of Heart Failure

Cardiologist Dr. John Boehmer spends many of his days assisting individuals who have heart disease, a condition affecting approximately 5.7 million US adults, according to the American...

Researchers Turn iPhone Camera into Optical Sensor

By integrating an optical Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems, or MEMS, chip into an iPhone camera, researchers at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland have developed a new, cost-effective...

NASA Navigation Sensor May Land in Applications Beyond Mars

Although a NASA-built sensor being tested in the Mojave Desert this summer will be used to support the safe landing of rovers on Mars, one of the technology's lead researchers sees...

SOLVING THE INTERCONNECT CHALLENGE: How to Bring Flexibility to Wearable Design

Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) are more prevalent than ever, especially in the popular configurations known today as “wearables.” Leading MEMS and...

Product of the Month

Watlow, St. Louis, MO, introduced the D4T with INTUITION® data logger with a range of field-removable I/O modules. The data logger features a 4.3” color graphical touch panel with a high-resolution graphical user...

Temperature-Regulating Fabrics Keep Babies Comfortable

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

The Heavy Impact of Advanced Lightweight Materials

Historically, high-strength materials have been heavy and dense. The need for high-strength but lightweight materials has become more widespread when designing everything from vehicles and...

WCX17 World Congress Experience

More than 11,000 engineering industry professionals from 55 countries will experience the new WCX — the evolution of SAE World Congress (here) — to be held April 4-6 in Detroit, MI. Attendees will gain new...

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.

New Products

Shape Sensor OFS, (Norcross, GA) has developed a shape sensor fiber. The technology platform produces twisted multicore optical fiber with continuous FBGs (Fiber Bragg Gratings). The sensor meets 3D shape sensing specifications,...

Product of the Month

OriginLab, Northampton, MA, released Origin and OriginPro 2017 data analysis and graphing software with more than 100 new features, enhancements, and apps. Features include Trellis plots for creating multi-panel graphs from...

The Basics of Encoder Selection

Many small motor applications, such as robotics, industrial equipment, and consumer products, employ digital incremental encoders for feedback sensing. Encoder selection is therefore an important part of the...

Servo Couplings for High-Tech Systems

Couplings are a critical part of system performance in high-tech applications, yet they are often one of the last components to be specified. Selecting the proper coupling ensures the equipment will meet...

Metallic Glass Shatters Gear Limitations

Gears play an essential role in precision robotics, and they can become a limiting factor when the robots must perform in space missions. In particular, the extreme temperatures of deep space pose...

Adding SCADA to a Hydraulic Power Unit

With an increased focus on plant productivity and equipment reliability, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems have become vital tools to reduce downtime while increasing asset...

PLCs Improve Control of Radio Broadcasts

Broadcasting employs the latest technology in many areas, but controlling the broadcast hardware connected to the antenna and the related transmission power, source, and facilities is usually still a...

Farzin Amzajerdian, Principal Investigator, Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA

Since 2003, Farzin Amzajerdian has worked on the Navigation Doppler Lidar (NDL), a sensor designed to support safe and precise vehicle landings on Mars and other...