When hit with light, semiconductors (materials that have an electrical resistance in between that of metals and insulators) generate an electric current....

The benefits of NASA's space exploration efforts are not limited to the cosmos. NASA technologies provide innovative solutions for people around the world. NASA missions have generated thousands of spinoffs...

Optical fibers have been traditionally produced by making a cylindrical object called a preform — essentially, a scaled-up model of the fiber — and then heating it. Softened...

Computer processors have continued to shrink down to nanometer sizes where there can be billions of transistors on a single chip. This phenomenon is described under Moore's Law, which...

The ability to automatically extract information from digital images opens many doors for manufacturers striving to cut costs, improve quality, and streamline their processes overall. The primary...

Positional sensors have applications where a very accurate measurement of position is needed over a limited range. One example of such an application is in manipulation of a...

Trilinear Line Scan Cameras

Teledyne e2v (Milpitas, CA) has announced its next generation of line scan cameras — the high-resolution ELiiXA+ trilinear color range. These new...

The demand for innovative solutions to enhance the safety of military personnel is continually on the rise. This includes the need to improve the performance of military vehicles and aircraft, in terms of both...

The task of creating a streetlamp optical system has changed over the last 20 years and due to this change, so has optical design software. Let’s compare the task of...

A mere 20 years ago, machine vision system designers did all they could to avoid color imaging applications due to higher costs and greater system and software complexity. But as...

A driverless car is making its way through a winding neighborhood street, about to make a sharp turn onto a road where a child’s ball has just rolled. Although no person in the car can see that ball, the...

Vision-guided robotics commonly used in today's automotive plants enables robots to “see” the object they are working on so they can perform the required activity accurately on/to an object that is...

In the traditional model of healthcare, a patient would visit a doctor regularly for checkups or for evaluations when there’s an ailment. This model, however, isn’t ideal for...

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

Crew time on the International Space Station (ISS) is extremely limited for any operations on science payloads. Autonomous science experiments in small, self-contained, cubical payloads are highly desirable...

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...

As the lighting industry continues to mature, vendors continue to pursue inexpensive lighting solutions that offer universal compatibility and are easy to install. For OEMs and manufacturers, LEDs have proven to be a...

Portable Laser Scanner

Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence (North Kingstown, RI) has announced the Leica Absolute Scanner LAS-XL, a new ultralarge scale portable laser scanner....

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...

A team led by engineers at the University of California San Diego has used data mining and computational tools to discover a new phosphor material for white LEDs that is inexpensive and easy...

High-Speed Cameras

iX Cameras (Woburn, MA and Rochford, UK) has added a new, value-priced camera to the premium ultra-high-speed i-SPEED 7 Series line. The new i-SPEED 713 is...

The Create the Future Design Contest has helped stimulate and reward engineering innovation over the past 16 years, drawing more than 14,000 product designs from engineers, students, and...

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...