Features

National Institutes of Health

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) traces its roots to 1887, when a one-room laboratory was created within the Marine Hospital Service (MHS), the predecessor agency to the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS). An...

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.

Surgeons Can Feel a Robot's Grip

Thanks to advances in biomedical engineering, the use of robotic systems in surgery has become increasingly common. A clear challenge in robotic surgery, however, is the lack of haptic technology — there have...

Linear Encoders Enable More Accurate Observation of the Sun

HEIDENHAIN CorporationSchaumburg, IL www.heidenhain.com Scientists know surprisingly little about what happens on the Sun. Solar researchers want to change this with the new Daniel K....

Carbon Nanotube-Based Coatings Provide Extremely-High Surface Emissivity

Santa Barbara Infrared (SBIR) and Surrey NanoSystems (SNS) have partnered to produce a line of extended-area blackbody sources with exceptionally-high emissivity and...

Flexible Liquid Lens Simplifies Inspection

When you buy a new car, you can choose from a wide range of exterior and interior features, transmission and dynamics, and safety bundles, to configure your individual vehicle. From the point of view...

Carbon Nanotube Resin Shores Up Boats and Bikes

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 of...

Q&A: aBeam Technologies' Dr. Keiko Munechika Offers New Ideas in Nano-Optics

Dr. Munechika — along with Alexander Kosh­elev and Giuseppe Calafiore at aBeam Technologies, and Stefano Cabrini at the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley...

New Products

Brushless AC Servo Motors Allied Motion Technologies (Amherst, NY) introduced the HeiMotion™ Premium (HMP) brushless AC servo motor family. The motors, which have a 20,000+ hour life span, are available in five metric frame...

Reduce Compressed Air Costs with Proper Air Cylinder Sizing

There may be no stronger ally of electrical power utilities than industrial size air compressors, as they drone on every day, taking atmospheric air and transforming it into useful...

Energy Management Through Direct Drive Servo Technology

Direct drive servo motor and drive technology has many advantages. It reduces an axis’ parts count, mechanical losses, and often its objectionable noise. What’s more, it also increases...

Smart Actuators Add Brains to Automation Brawn

Actuators have always been on the frontline of automation, providing the “push and pull” that extends human capabilities to operate everything from delicate pick-and-place applications to...

Eliminate Interference from Converter Output

Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) in frequency converters can be very problematic if not addressed properly in the initial design. EMC ensures the proper operation of devices to avoid negative...

Using Formal Methods for Engineering Embedded Systems

Between 1985 and 1987, a radiation therapy device called the Therac-25 was involved in at least six incidents in which the device delivered massive overdoses of radiation. The patients...

Product of the Month

Harwin, Salem, NH, announced the SYCAMORE surface-mount socket that provides pin retention and durability for high-volume applications manufactured using automated systems. The capacitor's design features three points of...

Ensuring Part Quality in Industrial Metal Additive Manufacturing

Concept Laser Grapevine, TX For more info click here Now that metal additive manufacturing (AM) is creating fully functional industrial parts, many OEMs are taking a closer look...

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was created with a national sense of urgency in February 1958 amidst one of the most dramatic moments in the history of the Cold War and the...

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.

Micromachined Sensors Monitor Train Rails and Predict Failures

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

Lindley Johnson, Planetary Defense Officer, NASA Headquarters, Washington, D. C.

NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO), managed at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., is responsible for early detection of potentially...

Product of the Month

Tektronix, Beaverton, OR, introduced the TTR500 Series USB vector network analyzer, a USB-based RF test instrument. It includes VectorVu-PC analysis software and built-in bias tee for testing active devices. The 2-port,...

New Products

Photoluminescence Spectrometer (PRIORITY) Edinburgh Instruments (Kirkton Campus, UK) introduces the FLS1000 state-of-the-art, modular photoluminescence spectrometer. The instrument excels in both steady state and time-resolved...

The Future of Wearable Technology

The U.S. Army uses wired and wireless systems to monitor real-time performance and safe operating limits of vehicles and aircraft, but no comparable systems exist for soldiers. New wearable technologies could...

CMOS The Future of Image Sensor Technology

CMOS imaging is trending to become the dominant imaging technology. Initially, CMOS was limited by its inherent noise. Architectures were then essentially analog and the idea of integrating the image...

Ruggedization of Imaging Lenses

Imaging lenses used in many industrial machine vision applications have special requirements beyond those of standard imaging lenses. The lenses used in factory automation, robotics, and industrial inspection...

Snapshot High-resolution Hyperspectral Imaging

Traditional digital cameras are comprised of an image sensor, typically either a Charge-Coupled Device (CCD), or, more commonly Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS). In either case, these...

Round Lens. Square Pixels. Accurate Images. Really?

Alens is cylindrical. It captures light in a circular plane for collection onto a rectangular digital sensor plane. This collection of photons is then transformed into electricity by smaller...

Robotic Vision Keeps an Assembly Plant at Home

A major manufacturer of electromechanical products had been operating six separate indexing assembly machines, each producing one of a family of more than 75 different products at about 40 parts...

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) was founded in 1901, and is now part of the U.S. Department of Commerce. Based in Gaithersburg, MD, it was established to remove a...