Tech Briefs

A comprehensive library of technical briefs from engineering experts at NASA and major government, university, and commercial laboratories covering all aspects of innovations in electronics, software, photonics, imaging, motion control, automation, sensors, test, materials, manufacturing, mechanical, and mechatronics.

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Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
A small mobile robot equipped with a stereoscopic machine vision system and two manipulator arms that have limited degrees of freedom has been given the ability to perform moderately...
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
A process that includes photolithography, liftoff, etching, and sputter deposition has been developed to enable the fabrication of thin, finely patterned layers of gold, platinum,...
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Software for Optimized Flattening From 3D to 2D
A computer program offers enhanced capabilities for calculating two-dimensional (2D) patterns needed to construct specified three-dimensional (3D) surfaces to within acceptably close approximations, with minimal waste of sheet material. Examples of complexly shaped sheet-material items that could be...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Electron-Beam Welding of Superalloys at High Temperatures
Electron-beam welding at high temperatures has been found to be a suitable process for joining structural components made by casting certain superalloys. This process can be used in the fabrication of superalloy parts that must withstand high operating temperatures. Examples of such parts...
Briefs: Medical
An improved method of sterilizing petri-dish spreaders and a spreader design to implement the method have been developed. In comparison with the conventional methods of sterilizing...
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Briefs: Medical
Quantifying Microbial Diversity Through Dilution/Extinction
A method of relatively easily, rapidly, and inexpensively quantifying the structural diversity of a multiple-species community of micro-organisms is based on the rate of extinction of phenotypic traits across a dilution gradient of a sample of the community. In this context, the concept of...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Solar Simulator for a Portable Solar-Absorptance Instrument
A special-purpose solar simulator includes (1) a tungsten lamp that serves as a gray-body radiator with a temperature of 3,200 K and (2) a mosaic of filters such that the filtered lamp output has the same normalized spectral irradiance as that of sunlight outside the atmosphere of the...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
A computer-based system, and a method built around the use of the system, have been developed to automate the acquisition, integration, and management of data that have been generated...
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Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Mixed-Signal Driver ASIC for IEEE 1394 and I²C Buses
The IEEE 1394 and I2C Mixed-Signal Driver is one of two application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) designed to function together as an interface among the following three digital-signal buses: A peripheral component interface (PCI) bus; A high-speed serial data bus that conforms to...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Circuits for conditioning AC power supplied to computers are under development. A power conditioner of this type would be an interface between a conventional AC power line and a...
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Briefs: Software
Program Injects Random Faults for Testing Computers
JIFI (Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Implementation of a Fault Injector) is a computer program for studying the ability of a computer to tolerate, detect, and/or recover from faults (that is, bit errors). JIFI affords the capability to inject faults into user-specified central- processing-unit (CPU)...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
A monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) has been designed to function as a low-power-consumption, low-noise amplifier (LNA) at frequencies from about 65 to about 110 GHz. This MMIC...
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Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Monolithic integrated circuits (in particular, Schottky-diode-based frequency multipliers) that operate at frequencies as high as a few terahertz are being developed in a program...
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Briefs: Motion Control
The term "COSMOWRAP" denotes a compact, stiff, remotely actuatable, lightweight, quick-release clamp that could be substituted for the larger, heavier, and more-difficult-to-use toggle-action...
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Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Cells that contain thin, single-crystal films of photoresponsive organic materials [e.g., meta-nitroaniline (m-NA)] have been invented for use as nonlinear optics and especially as...
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Briefs: Photonics/Optics
An optoelectronic oscillator with a nominal operating frequency of 11.763 GHz has been designed and constructed to demonstrate a technique for reducing the sensitivity of the...
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Briefs: Photonics/Optics
The figure depicts an apparatus for measuring x-ray diffraction (XRD) and/or x-ray fluorescence (XRF) in a specimen of material. The specimen could be, for example, a standard XRD powder...
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Briefs: Test & Measurement
A proposed program of research would be oriented toward the development of fluorescent dyes for use in two-photon microscopy. Two-photon microscopy and its predecessor, one-photon microscopy, are...
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Briefs: Photonics/Optics
A method of growing lattice-mismatched InxGa1-xAs epitaxial layers on InP substrates using intermediate buffer layers of InAsyP1-yhas been invented to improve the performance of...
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Briefs: Motion Control
A system of electronic hardware and software has been developed as an experimental prototype of a visual interface between a human operator and a possibly remote one-arm anthropomorphic...
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Briefs: Software
Software for Geometric Calibration of Video Cameras
A software library and set of programs largely automate the geometric calibration of video cameras. Developed especially for robotic vision systems, this software generates the information needed to determine the three-dimensional (3D) positions of objects that appear in two- dimensional (2D)...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
The figure depicts a mechanism that is capable of simultaneously rotating as many as six disposable bioreactor chambers about horizontal axes. The particular bioreactor chambers for...
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Briefs: Motion Control
Tip fences have been invented to reduce the noise generated in the airflows about the high-lift systems (the flaps and slats) of airplane wings. Tip fences also afford an important...
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Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Capacitors in which the main dielectric layers are made from sintered nanocrystalline BaTiO3 have been fabricated and tested in an initially successful and continuing effort to increase...
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Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Millimeter-wave/microwave ablation (essentially, heating by use of millimeter-wave and microwave electromagnetic radiation) has been proposed as a means of treating atherosclerotic...
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Briefs: Software
KPP — a Preprocessor for VHDL
KPP is a computer program that serves as a preprocessor for VHDL code. [“VHDL” signifies VHSIC Hardware Description Language, which is a language used by the United States Department of Defense for describing, designing, and simulating very-high-speed integrated circuits (VHSICs).] KPP is based on, and similar...
Briefs: Software
Software for Analyzing Valve-Actuator
A computer program assists engineers in analyzing data on the performances of actuators of fuel and oxidizer valves in the main engines of the space shuttle. The program could be adapted to similar use in other settings in which, as in the space shuttle, valve actuators are instrumented to provide data on...
Briefs: Software
Software for Network Processing of
The Electronic Portable Information Collection (EPIC) computer program is a computer system that processes work authorization documents (WADs). The EPIC System, which is also known as the Portable Data Collection System, comprises a central data server and portable data terminals. The central data server acts as...
Briefs: Materials
The term “prefield test” denotes an in situ test of contaminated soil in preparation for in situ treatment of the soil by a method called “electrokinetically enhanced...
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