 | | | | Sensing with Autonomous Mobile Robots
| Autonomous mobile robots rely on sensors to navigate through their environment. | | | Keeping Cool
| | If you've ever worked while resting a laptop computer on your lap, you know that computers emit heat, and the more powerful the computer, the greater the heat produced. This is a problem because electronics really don't enjoy elevated temperatures. A hot computer is a slow computer or, worse, a computer that will cease functioning. | | | The Big Picture: Sensor Webs in Disaster Response Demo
| | In an increasingly wired world, knitting together data from disparate sources into an interoperable whole can present disaster managers and first responders with critical information during a major emergency or crisis. Building on a vendor-neutral interoperability framework for Web-based discovery, access, control, integration, and visualization of online sensors, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) tested this idea in a December 2006 disaster response demo. | | | Wireless's Domestic Turf War
| | Three major wireless communications protocol rivals have made new moves in home automation , while energy-harvesting pioneer pursues its own path to the building market. | |  MORE ARTICLES
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| 3D Image Correlation: Measuring Displacement and Surface Strain
| | 3D image correlation is a general-purpose strain measurement tool that allows us to measure 3D displacement and the true surface strains of any material without contact and without many of the difficulties associated with these measurements. | | | Look to the Birds
| | Oxford University zoologists Graham Taylor and Adrian Thomas have
outfitted an eagle with four miniature high-speed spy cameras and
other instruments in a 15 g pack to learn more about its aviational
secrets. An inertial measurement unit recorded details of the
bird's aerobatics and transmitted the data to a receiver on the
ground. | | | Cleared for Travel? Using a Gaussmeter to Check Magnetic Materials Before Shipment
| | Increasingly strict regulations present a challenge to those shipping magnetized materials. Here's how a Hall effect gaussmeter can help. | | | MORE ARTICLES
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| Mel's Picks
| | If you visit the site for AIM, the global trade association for automatic identification, you'll find news and links about various automatic identification technologies, including RFID, bar codes, card technologies, and their related standards. You can sign up for relevant newsletters, view surveys, and even submit a request for proposal, or RFP. | | | Accelerometer Pricing Challenges; Life Sciences Instrumentation Increases
| | Frost & Sullivan's (www.sensors.frost.com) new report, "Accelerometers in North American Automotive, Aerospace, and Industrial Markets," reveals that holding prices at profitable levels has become a real challenge for suppliers of accelerometers. | | | Tiny Radio Broadcasts from Your Insides
| | Medical implants (and ingestibles) have escaped the Star Trek TNG set and entered the real world to the tune of a projected annual increase of nearly 11% in the U.S. A 2003 report from the Freedonia Group (www.freedoniagroup.com) puts the 2007 total at $24.4 billion. | | | Product News
| | Product News is but a sampling of the many, many products we've seen recently. The ones included this month reflect a trend, are different enough to make me sit up and take notice, or are nice implementations of current technology.
| | | China Expansion: GE, SCS, Endevco
| | GE Infrastructure (www.geinfrastructure.com), which GE calls one of its "newest growth engines," has introduced four new technology solutions to the Chinese market. Company officials made the announcement during an event held in Shanghai called the Futurescape of Technology. Overall, the event showcased more than 30 new products that can support the growth of China, especially in the critical infrastructure sector.
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| | Photonic Crystal Fiber Sensors on the Way?
| | A research team led by Henry Du of the Stevens Institute of Technology is investigating ways to enhance photonic crystal fiber (PCF) sensors, sensor arrays, and sensor networks for applications including remote and dynamic environmental monitoring, manufacturing process safety, medical diagnostics, and homeland security.
| | | Consolidations Promise End-User Benefit
| | A few years back, Measurement Specialties, a pioneer in pressure sensing, gained recognition for an aggressive schedule of acquisitions. More recently, the company established MSI Sensors (www.msisensors.com) as a separate division and echoed history as MSI made four significant acquisitions in 2004. In all cases, the acquired companies note the benefits of being a part of MSI's global operation.
| | | MEMS Report Card Doubles as Vendor Selection Guide
| | How do you select a product or service supplier? When you're looking to establish a long-term affiliation that's critical to your products and customer relationships, you need to do some homework. This is true in all areas, but perhaps especially so where MEMS technology is concerned. After more than 20 years, the infrastructure for this technology—so critical to the future of sensing—is still being established. | | | Freight Fright Reduction
| | GE's security business (www.ge.com ) has completed the first commercial field test of the Tamper Evident Secure Container (TESC), a freight container developed jointly with the world's leading manufacturer of maritime shipping containers, China International Marine Containers Group Ltd. (CIMC).
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| Steep-Slope Monitoring
| | Although GPS is an efficient tool for deformation monitoring, it also is an expensive one for large projects. The authors developed a remote-controlled monitoring system using an electronic switching device for multiple antennas to monitor steep slopes at the Xiaowan hydropower station in China. | | | Getting into Pockets and Purses
| | Add one more to the list of challenges faced by consumer GPS-enabled devices: the human hand that holds them. Body loading significantly degrades receiver sensitivity. A dielectrically loaded quadrifilar helix antenna can ameliorate this condition. | | | MORE ARTICLES
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| Sense and Respond Networks for Agile, Secure Distribution
| | Active RFID tags can store entire manifests and routing schedules as well as sensor data. | | | Safe Boating, Everyone!
| | The cry of "man overboard!" is second only to "fire on shipboard!" as a general alarm for all hands. But what if no one sees that fellow boater or shipmate (or pet) fall into the drink? The Raymarine (www.raymarine.com) LifeTag system, using Ember's ZigBee (www.zigbee.org) networking technology, does away with that unhappy scenario. | | | MORE ARTICLES
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| The Five-Minute Filter University—August Session
| | Last month we discussed a number of simple passive filters in both low-pass and high-pass configurations. Although these filters could reject out-of-band signals, this capability was relatively limited because they all had an attenuation roll-off rate of –20 dB/decade. You will find that many applications require a much greater ability to reject out-of-band signals than that provided by the passive low-pass filters we looked at. | | | The Five-Minute Filter University, July Session
| | Back in the late 1970s comedian Don Novello (a.k.a. Father Guido Sarducci) had a routine called the "Five-Minute University," which was supposed to impart to you, in the span of only five minutes, all the knowledge you would retain five years after graduating from a regular university. So, in the same spirit, I offer "Dr. Ed's Five-Minute Analog Filter Design University." | | | MORE ARTICLES
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| MES—A Work In Progress
| | Traditionally, a manufacturing execution system (MES) is defined as a production scheduling and tracking system, which schedules and updates orders, analyzes and reports resource availability, collects execution data—such as material and labor usage, process parameters, and order and equipment status—and maintains statistical quality control. But such a static definition doesn't do this genre of software justice because MESs are a work in progress. | | | OPC—A Question of Relevance
| | For ten years, OPC's suite of standards has provided the industrial automation world with open connectivity, but the technology on which its standards are based is no longer on the cutting edge of data sharing. The foundation that rescued manufacturers, systems integrators, and software providers from the chaos of proprietary communications interfaces now has to compete with fast movers such as service-oriented architectures and Web services. The question is: Can the standards evolve, embrace new communications mechanisms, and remain relevant? | | | MORE ARTICLES
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| Special Report
| | It's hard to overestimate the impact of MEMS—or LabVIEW—on sensor applications. | | | So Much More
| | The Today at Sensors weblog (www.sensorsmag.com) not only gave us Sensors editors an outlet to report daily from Sensors Expo (June 5–7, www.sensorsexpo.com), but also it lets us tell you more about Expo happenings—among other things—than we've been able to before. Thank goodness, because there's much to tell! | | | MORE ARTICLES
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On-Site Trace Chemical Detection, Part 1:
| | The first installment of this two-part series discusses ion mobility spectroscopy (IMS), the leading contender for fast and reliable detection of trace chemicals, and differential ion mobility spectroscopy (DMS), a related technology that provides faster, smaller and more sensitive sensors capable of detecting chemicals in environments with greater concentrations of interfering substances. | | | New Implementations of OGC Sensor Web Enablement Standards
| | Wildfires, river basins, tsunami alerts, and environmental risk management are just some of the projects using OGC's interoperability framework for Web-based access and control of sensors and sensor data. | | | The Big Picture: Sensor Webs in Disaster Response Demo
| | In an increasingly wired world, knitting together data from disparate sources into an interoperable whole can present disaster managers and first responders with critical information during a major emergency or crisis. Building on a vendor-neutral interoperability framework for Web-based discovery, access, control, integration, and visualization of online sensors, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) tested this idea in a December 2006 disaster response demo. | | | Better Security with Ambient Air Sensing
| | We all want to feel safe in public places, and knowing that there's nothing noxious in the air is a strong step in that direction. | | | Monitoring Within and Without
| | Firefighters and HazMat workers have a very tough job. They're frequently in heavy gear, in unfriendly atmospheres, and working hard. Unfortunately, this combination of equipment, environment, and job stress means that frequently they're operating at the limits of human endurance. | | | Border Chief Says . . .
| | The federal government is spending billions on new Border Patrol agents and on sensor and radar networks in remote areas of the U.S.-Mexico border. | | | Self-Assembling Fluids
| | NIST researchers have devised a novel platform for self-assembling hierarchical surfaces in a fluid. Rather than mixing the components on a substrate and letting them dry, the investigators allowed them to mix and assemble freely in a fluid and then quickly froze them in place. | | | Achieving the Potential of Nano Gas Sensors
| | The demand for sensitive, low-power, low-cost gas sensors that respond quickly to appropriate stimuli is growing. Macro scale components and conventional manufacturing techniques cannot provide sensors that deliver the detection levels and low-power operation increasingly required by today's applications. And many of these sensors are prone to false alarms. However, manipulating sensing events at the molecular level avoids most problems associated with the more traditional sensor technologies. | | | E-Nosing Around
| | CogniScent has developed a DNA-based sensing material that can detect, identify, and discriminate among a large number of airborne compounds in ~2 s. ScenTraK, a lightweight, handheld unit, uses an optoelectronic sensor array; its output drives software algorithms trained to ID specific olfactory patterns. | | | MORE ARTICLES
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| Mel's Picks
| | Online Vision Tutorial; Job Search Site; Personalized Ringtones | | | Mel's Picks
| | I've mentioned Sensorland.com, a Web site for information on sensing and measurement, before in this column. The people behind Sensorland.com have now added Sensorwatch to the main site. This is a series of internal Web sites, each devoted to a particular type of sensor. Currently, there are sites for pressure, position/proximity, vibration, load/force, and instrumentation. Look here for lists of suppliers, new product updates, and other relevant information. | | | MORE ARTICLES
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| Nonintrusive, Wearable Bioelectrodes for Monitoring the Heart and Brain
| | Improved noncontact electrodes and noninvasive hybrid biosensors enable fast, reliable readings of hearts and brains, without requiring contact with the skin. | | | Monitoring Within and Without
| | Firefighters and HazMat workers have a very tough job. They're frequently in heavy gear, in unfriendly atmospheres, and working hard. Unfortunately, this combination of equipment, environment, and job stress means that frequently they're operating at the limits of human endurance. | | | Beacons on the Battlefield
| | It's a fact that, in the chaos of the battlefield (and especially in confused urban warfare situations), people die from so-called "friendly fire." Adapting a MEMS technology developed for use in gas sensors, ICx Ion Optics has created IR emitters tuned to night-vision wavelengths. | | | No-Antenna Radar
| | The U.S. Navy Super Hornets are being equipped with a new type of radar made by Raytheon. This technology is a departure from conventional radar in that there is no moving antenna. | | | Bullet vs. Soft Body Armor
| | "Frangible" bullets are designed to break into small bits when they strike a hard surface. This ammunition might appear counter-intuitive, but it is used by law enforcement personnel in areas where ricochets could harm innocent bystanders. | | | Under Predator's Watch
| | CNN correspondent Brent Sadler, who is on assignment in Afghanistan, tells of a close encounter with a sensor-rich Predator UAV, "the U.S. military's most sophisticated killing machine in the war on terror." | | | Free Advice on Sensors for Defense
| | We now face a new concept of war where instead of being miles away,
the enemy may be in the same building or just a few feet away,"
says David Shumaker, director of SENSIAC, the new sensing
information analysis center serving the U.S. Department of Defense. | | | Funding Enables UAV Capabilities
| | According to Forecast International analyst Larry Dickerson, the market for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) reconnaissance systems, including air vehicles and payloads, is expected to be worth $13.6 billion through 2014. "Thanks to their battlefield successes in Iraq and Afghanistan, money is being lavished on UAV programs as never before," said Dickerson. | | | SensorsGov Not Just for Government
| | The second SensorsGov show (December 68) aimed to help engineers and managers in all sectors of governmentfrom military to health monitoring to transportation. But most of the discussion applied to nongovernment engineers, too. | | | MORE ARTICLES
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