Student-made device sends obstacle warnings to mechanical bug’s brain
Can a robot learn to navigate like a cockroach? To help researchers find out if a mechanical device can mimic the pesky insect’s behavior, a Johns Hopkins engineering student has built a flexible, sensor-laden antenna. Like a cockroach’s own wriggly appendage, the artificial antenna sends signals to a wheeled robot’s electronic brain, enabling the machine to scurry along walls, turn corners and
Replacing lead-based solder
Electrically conductive adhesive (ECA) materials offer the electronics industry an alternative to the tin-lead solder now used for connecting display driver chips, memory chips and other devices to circuit boards. But before these materials find broad application in high-end electronic equipment, researchers will have to overcome technical challenges that include low current density.
Using self-assembled monolayers – essentially molecular
A team of first-year engineering students at Elizabethtown College have created a proximity sensor system that will help a disabled woman better maneuver her power wheelchair.
The Audible Warning Sonic Sensor System, which is mounted to and powered by Melissa Sneath’s wheelchair, produces a warning sound when she is approaching an object or wall. The sound changes as she gets closer to the object, allowing her to correct her course and avoid a collision.
“As a result of h
Students from Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering are partnering with Carnegie Mellon University’s “Red Team” in an effort to win a $2 million prize from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). All they have to do is complete the toughest ground course ever devised for a self-guided robotic vehicle.
The contest, called the DARPA Grand Challenge, is a race between fully self-guided ground vehicles to be conducted in the Southwestern United States on Oct. 8,
The engineers who built the massive external fuel tank that will power the shuttle Discovery into orbit this spring used sophisticated X-ray detectors developed by UF researchers to reduce the chance of a defect in the foam insulation covering the tank. The detectors, first invented as a new technology to find land mines, can identify tiny gaps, or air-filled voids, in the insulating foam without causing any damage. It is believed that such a gap – possibly located between the foam and the ta
A new integrated facility designed to give scientists unprecedented insights into the chemical and biological reactions which can transform renewable plant and waste materials into useful sources of energy was dedicated yesterday at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
Called the Biomass Surface Characterization Laboratory (BSCL), the $2.85 million facility features an array of electron and optical microscopes, and other advanced res
Flawed Hardware Can Function Well in Many Applications, USC Researchers Find
Computer chip manufacturers traditionally have had a single, simple standard for their product: perfection. But a USC engineer who has spent his career devising ways to have chips test themselves has found that less than perfect is sometimes good enough — possibly good enough to save billions of dollars. “Chips with any flaws at all have always been discarded,” said Melvin A. Breuer, a professor in the
British company Instrumentel has developed a revolutionary communications technology that enables two-way command and control for battery-less remote sensing and actuation.
The company originated from the University of Leeds, where ground-breaking research by Dr Greg Horler of the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering has produced an inductively coupled wireless telemetry system based on miniaturised electronics that can both sense and actuate.
It is bel
Loops of small diameter polyethylene-coated copper tube are buried between 50cm and 60cm below the surface of the garden of the house to form a captor through which refrigerant fluid is pumped, typically R407c blend. A scroll compressor and a stainless steel plate heat exchanger within the generator unit complete the circuit to transfer the energy captured from the soil into the house.
The energy taken from the soil is quickly and continually replaced by sunlight, wind and rainfall
Computer simulations will improve understanding of faults and power surges
Scientists at Cardiff University, UK have been called in to help improve the already high levels of safety and reliability on the UK’s electrical transmission system. A team of experts in Cardiff School of Engineering will run sophisticated computer simulations, laboratory experiments and field tests on the National Grid electricity network to develop a better understanding of what happens when faults a
’Toddler’ to be demonstrated at AAAS meeting Feb. 17
Three independent research teams, including one from MIT, have built walking robots that mimic humans in terms of their gait, energy-efficiency, and control. The MIT robot also demonstrates a new learning system that allows the robot to continually adapt to the terrain as it walks. The work, to be described in the Feb. 18 issue of the journal Science, could change the way humanoid robots are designed and controlled and
Supercapacitors that can deliver a strong surge of electrical power could be manufactured from carbon nanotubes using a technique developed by researchers at UC Davis.
Supercapacitors are electrical storage devices that can deliver a huge amount of energy in a short time. Hybrid-electric and fuel-cell powered vehicles need such a surge of energy to start, more than can be provided by regular batteries. Supercapacitors are also needed in a wide range of electronic and enginee
’Roast’ hardwood at relatively low temperatures and then gasify it. Dutch chemical engineer Mark Prins has shown that this is an efficient means of producing sustainable energy. The gas produced can be used for the production of electricity, fuels and/or chemicals.
Prins followed a thermodynamic approach to investigate how biomass could be gasified as efficiently as possible. He developed a concept which combines two techniques: torrefaction (’roasting’ a
Electrochemical transistors made of plastic open myriad possibilities. Since both electrons and ions are active, they can function as a bridge between traditional electronics and biological systems. A new dissertation from Linköping University in Sweden describes a simple and inexpensive humidity sensor that can be manufactured in a printing press.
Electrically conducting plastic is used today in field effect transistors, light-emitting diodes, electrochemical components, and
A new study has disclosed perhaps the strongest evidence to date for superfluidity in an exotic gas that mimics extreme behavior in Nature — ranging from high temperature superconductivity to the behavior of fundamental particles in the Big Bang, when the universe is believed to have begun in a huge burst of energy within a very small space. Although the gas was trapped by a laser beam within billionths of a degree of absolute zero, the lowest possible temperature, researchers said it behaved
Significant advances in university research and other studies in the past two years are pointing toward Oregon as the possible epicenter of wave energy development in the United States.
This may lead to a major initiative to expand a technology that is now in its engineering infancy, and tap the constant heave of the oceans for a new era of clean, affordable and renewable electrical power. Electrical engineers at Oregon State University have pioneered the development of techno
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