Category Archives: Newsworthy

Why Do We Need Amorphous Iron Motors?

<Occasionally, engineers need motors that must operate at high frequencies but with a high energy-efficiency. At high frequencies, the magnetic fields inside the motor change rapidly. Normal CRGO or Cold Rolled Grain Oriented steel has eddy current losses that rise with the increase in operating frequency. Amorphous iron has a special structure that allows it to respond to fast changing magnetic fields without power loss due to hysteresis and eddy currents.

Contrary to popular belief, amorphous iron is not an exotic material and is not hard to come by. People’s interest in this special metal is rising since it has magnetic properties that promote energy efficiency in power distribution equipment and electrical machinery. The properties of amorphous iron make it very useful for electrical equipment.

For example, a commercially available motor made of amorphous-iron has a two-stator permanent magnet brushless configuration. While the rotor has 36 poles, each stator is provided with 54 slots. Green areas show the places where the motor uses amorphous iron. In practice, the motor operates at 1,000 RPM.

As interest in this metal grows, amorphous iron is actually manufactured in huge quantities. Two firms in the world are the major suppliers of amorphous iron. One of them is the Advanced Technology & Materials Co. Ltd., China and the other Metglas in Conway, SC and Tokyo, a division of Hitachi Metals. Of them, Hitachi Metals supplies the major bulk of the 100,000 tons of amorphous iron produced annually.

Amorphous iron is a typical alloy of iron with silicon and boron. Manufacturers make amorphous iron in the form of thin ribbon or foil of 25-micron thickness. The process used to manufacture the iron sets the special form factor. Molten iron is made to drip onto a wheel made of pure molybdenum. Since the molybdenum wheel is maintained at a precisely controlled temperature, the iron hitting the wheel quenches very quickly. In fact, the temperature of the molten iron drops at a rate of nearly a million degrees every second. Such an extra-fast rate of quenching freezes the molecules of iron before they have a chance to form crystals. That gives the iron its amorphous structure, which has a much less orderly form that the more popular crystalline iron.

Since the extra-fast rate of quenching has to occur throughout the internal molecules of the iron, the harvested iron from the molybdenum wheel is necessarily thin. If the thickness of iron increases beyond 25-microns, the internal molecules would not cool so fast and would have time to form crystals. The resulting metal would not have uniform amorphous quality.

Amorphous iron, with its disorderly structure responds to changes in magnetic fields far more readily than does iron in its ordinary crystalline form. The super thin nature of the amorphous iron limits the formation of eddy currents, which are an additional source of loss. Overall, amorphous iron exhibits higher efficiency because of very much reduced power loss when working in a given magnetic field strength as compared to that of the regular type of crystalline iron.

You can roll up your TV

Currently you can carry your TV in your hand as you travel. Of course, the screen size of your smartphone may not be as big as the TV in your living room. The day may not be far off when you could just roll up your large-screen TV, put it under your arm and walk out of your room.

LG has demonstrated a completely flexible large-scale display of size 18 inches. The display is flexible to the extent of being rolled up into a 3 cm scroll for transport. You can unfurl the transparent display, hang it on the wall, lay it flat on a desktop or mount it in a conventional frame. LG is confident of unfurling a 60-inch variant of the display by 2017 and promised that they will give it even higher transmittance.

NPD DisplaySearch of LG has been working for some time now to produce displays on flexible substrates culminating in the commercialization of the flexible 18-inch large-scale display. They plan to bring out smaller flexible displays over the next couple of years. Although these may be of the size used in smart watches, they will be one-time flexible until put behind a curved glass cover. However, to have them flex in any shape at any time is still some way off.

Flexible displays are usually made from organic light emitting diodes (OLED). These are deposited on a transparent substrate. Since they do not require a backlight, they can display graphics such as schematics in mid-air, being visible from both sides. LG successfully demonstrated this mid-air display capability while at the same time proved that they have mastered the basic technologies behind manufacturing rollable transparent displays.

However, commercialization of the technology still faces substantial hurdles. The OLED needs to be protected from oxygen and moisture – both of these reduce the life of the display. LG expects active OLED will bring in revenues to the extent of $23 billion by 2020, coming mostly from mobile phones and smartwatches with flexed and fixed displays. However, there are production challenges yet to be solved. Protecting a display from the environment is no big deal as encapsulating a curved display can be fixed in glass and metal. However, a backplane is yet to be developed that will reliably prevent damage to the OLEDs while remaining sufficiently flexible.

If you have visited the IMAX Theater, you can appreciate the wraparound immersive experience that a flexible display brings. Apart from making mobile devices easier to carry, the curved screen technology can provide auxiliary screens that help to transport and display large diagrams such as building schematics and blueprints.

LG’s 18-inch prototype has a configuration of 1200×800 with nearly one million pixels. It has a curvature radius of 30R, meaning you can roll it into a scroll of a little over an inch, while it is still working and there will be no damage to the display. LG is planning for a 60-inch display with an increased curvature radius of 50R.

If LG succeeds in developing the transparent polyimide backplane for the display, someday, refrigerators will have transparent doors so you could see the food inside, while reading the temperature and seeing advertisements.

Scalable Electronics – the automakers choice

Those who have watched the movie Total Recall may recall seeing automobiles driven by robots. Passengers need to mention only the destination and sit back and enjoy the ride. The robot drives them to their destination. Well, those days may not be far off in reality. Automobile development is proceeding with technological advances that allow vehicles to control themselves to the extent of driving with minimal or no human assistance.

However, such developments cannot happen overnight. Then again, there is the question of people accepting such advancements. Therefore, automakers are continually announcing new developments in automated features in their upcoming models. For example, some vehicles are already equipped with automated monitoring and warning features. The plan is to introduce semi-autonomous models initially and then phase in the fully autonomous vehicles to be driven on the roads along with other traditional vehicles.

Such innovations in the auto industry involve advanced electronics for sensing, recognizing, deciding and acting upon changes in the road environment. While introducing new automated features, automakers have to face several factors that affect decisions about the electronic components and systems. Typically, these factors include performance, size, cost, power requirements, reliability, availability and support. In addition, automobile systems need to evolve from year to year, proceeding with car model changes and bringing in feature additions and improvements in the sensing technology. This requires the electronics to be scalable.

Scalable solutions offer the best options to carmakers. Scalable technological solutions help to keep the carmakers stay on track when offering new automated capabilities while balancing the requirements in the overall system design. To make self-driving cars a reality, auto manufacturers need improved electronic technologies for sensing, communications, sensor fusion, high-performance processing and many other functions. As car models change and improved sensors and additional features increase the data load, autonomous vehicle controls will have to be scalable, as this is a multi-year evolution.

Safety, convenience and efficiency are three things that all owners of vehicles look for. Increasing autonomous control in vehicles will help in eliminate several types of human errors that cause most accidents. Not only will that save lives, but also reduce injuries to a great extent and minimize property damage. Imagine cars driving themselves while chauffeuring children, the disabled and the elderly. People will be free to take up other activities while traveling. You can call your car to pick you up, without needing a human driver. Autonomous operation of vehicles will allow them to be more fuel-efficient, while more vehicles can travel safely together on roads. This will save energy and reduce costs on infrastructure.

All the initial automated feature offerings support safety as their top priority. These features are primarily designed to help drivers avoid making mistakes and are termed the Advanced Driver Assistance System or ADAS. As part of scalable electronics, ADAS features will be important elements when carmakers introduce fully autonomous vehicle operations in the future. According to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration definitions, this introduction will happen in five levels –

• Level 0 – No automation, driver in full control
• Level 1 – Function-specific automation, most of the current modern vehicles are here
• Level 2 – Combined function automation, active cruise control with lane keeping
• Level 3 – Limited self-driving automation, full self-driving but driver can take over control
• Level 4 – Full self-driving automation, driver not required.

Project Firefly – the electric helicopter

A subsidiary of the United Technologies Corp., Sikorsky Aircraft has revealed its innovation at the Farnborough International Air Show – a demonstrator for an all-electric helicopter technology. The actual demonstration aircraft named The Firefly will be unveiled on July 26 at the Experimental Aircraft Association at their AirVenture exhibition to be held in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, USA. Being a part of the world symposium on electric aircraft, the demonstrator is expected to be one of the main attractions.

According to the Director of Sikorsky Innovations, Chris Van Buiten, the objectives of the Project Firefly are –

– Offering proof of principle concept for validating the benefits of an electrically powered rotorcraft
– Developing the technologies for enabling a manned flight of this technology
– Driving future development of improved, state-of-the-art green technologies and practices

The demonstrator is built around an S-300C helicopter. The Innovations team has replaced its legacy propulsion system. In its place, the team has used a highly efficient electric motor, which is controlled by a digital controller from US Hybrid. Power comes from a lithium ion energy storage system made by Gaia. Health information about the aircraft comes in real-time from integrated sensors via a panel integrated interactive LCD monitor. The Eagle Aviation Technologies, LLC, executed the custom airframe modifications and assembly of the demonstrator aircraft.

As the fossil fuel reserves of the world continue to dwindle with increasing demand, the supply/demand cycle is set to increase the operating costs of all vehicles running on such fuel. The aviation industry is particularly vulnerable, with the worst sufferer being the commercial helicopter market – spiraling fuel costs are set to threaten the critical role played by rotorcraft.

Transformations in the propulsion technology have being enabling most of the significant advancements in aviation so far. Electric propulsion technology for rotorcraft is especially exciting because this technology increases the efficiency of the aircraft nearly three times from the baseline. Because of electric propulsion, the reduction of the quantity of moving parts also reduces the inherent complexity of the propulsion system, thereby increasing the reliability and reducing the direct operating costs.

The demonstrator aircraft has a 200HP electric motor, its controller, cockpit controls and a battery system. Sikorsky has a standard practice in place for all aircraft programs. Only upon completion of all ground tests and reviews of safety of flight, they will plan for the first flight and this may happen only later this year.

Team Sikorsky anticipates that the current technology for energy storage will be unable to meet the payload and endurance levels of a typical helicopter performance. However, they expect to incorporate more mature technology as these values grow. Project Firefly has the following features –

− Fully electric drive system
− Highly efficient and safe high-density energy storage system
− Technologies for automate monitoring and alerting
− Cockpit displays suitable for the next generation

Sikorsky Innovations has set themselves a task involving redefining the future of vertical flight. They intend to mature and develop the technologies, involved products and processes to increase the scope of previous efforts.

Are Biometrics Related To The Internet Of Things?

With the Internet of Things or IoT, users and developers can easily augment its functionality, since the IoT is designed to be extensible. Therefore, it is not a far-fetched expectation that the IoT is going to be all over the place and users will get all types of data from it. According to a recent study by the Biometrics Research Group, biometric sensors are being projected as the next big step in providing the necessary security for accessing that data. That is good news for the biometrics industry – by the year 2018, IoT users alone will need nearly 500 million biometric sensors.

As against the normal practice of identification via a username and a password (which can easily be stolen), a biometric sensor identifies a person using unique physiological or behavioral traits, such as his or her fingerprints or his voice. Not only does this save time, the identification method is inherently more secure, making it more valuable. There is nothing like a password or a key to be misplaced, lost or forgotten. The best example of a biometric sensor in use is on Apple devices, with their Touch ID sensor for unlocking the device. In general, such sensors are typically used in security applications and in high-end access controls.

However, the consumer world is slowly making increasing use of biometric sensors, especially after the Fast Identity Online Alliance lent their support for these devices. The Alliance is a conglomeration of some of the biggest names in the technical and financial industry, and their aim is to create a roadmap for using different types of biometric sensors, policies and systems. Most of the use will be similar to the traditional systems, but the sensors will be linked to the Internet.

The Alliance is promoting the use of biometric sensors because of the real security benefits that consumers will get when they use them; the foremost benefit being the inability of losing your access capability. Although you could lose your key, forget your password or misplace your codes, there is only a very slim chance that you will lose your biometric access capability. And, the method is fast and convenient; you will never be locked out of your home or office.

The biometrics method of identification is also more secure than other methods. Even though attackers could cut off the thumb to use its fingerprint, it may not be of much use to them as biometrics can differentiate between living tissue and dead ones. In the same way, it is impossible to completely duplicate the retina pattern of the user’s eye or mimic the voice to fool the biometrics sensor.

With the IoT focus being strong on biometric sensors, the quality and reliability of the sensors is steadily improving. As consumers become increasingly more educated, affiliated technologies are becoming more popular, and that includes wearable devices with biometric sensors. As the popularity grows, so does the response speed of these biometric sensors. Coupled with falling prices, expect the use of biometrics sensors to go up in more and more devices.

How Are Brilliant Machines Created?

The IoT or the Internet of Things has one more feather in its cap. It has now conquered the industrial machine. With GE spearheading the initiative, the new type of industrial machines is aptly named Brilliant Machines.

Although GE is pouring nearly $1.5 billion into the amalgamation of industrial internet and big data, their plan is rather simple. The industrial internet is actually the business version of the Internet of Things. Instead of people being interconnected, here machines talk to each other. GE plans to mix that connectivity with analytics and software so that the entire arrangement becomes very efficient.

GE has started their foray with a battery factory. Covering a work area of nearly 180,000 square feet, the factory is packed with more than 10,000 sensors. Whatever happens within the factory, the sensors keep a track. This includes, for instance, the type of powders that are used to create the ceramics for use in the batteries and the temperatures of the ovens baking these ceramics. They also monitor the air pressure, the time each battery spends inside a particular oven or in a part of the manufacturing line. With smartphones connected via Wi-Fi, employees are able to keep track of all what is going on.

How does all this help GE? Gathering all this data, GE was surprised to find the cause of failure of some of the parts within a battery. The parts failed when they were left in the oven for longer time. Armed with this revelation, GE is able to cut wastage by monitoring how long specific parts stay in the oven.

GE makes investments in several areas. They make gas and steam turbines where over 52 million man-hours per year translate into $7 billion worth of labor cost and all this goes to service over 55,000 turbines. GE manufactures commercial jet aircrafts that take up 205 million man-hours every year. In the world there are over 120,000 diesel electric rail engines made by GE alone that require over 50 million man-hours for annual maintenance – roughly equal to $3 billion in labor cost.

By incorporating sensors within these machines and monitoring them, GE intends to lessen the time and cost of maintaining the various machines they use for power, healthcare, aviation and rail industries. Engineers collect the machine data on their smartphones, run it through visualization software and analytics, making it easier to interpret. The best part is that no engineer has to be near a machine or even onsite to monitor the machines. They can be anywhere on the globe and yet be able to relay accurate instructions to those on the site. The amount of time and costs reduced with the wealth of information available and its analysis is really helping GE.

Brilliant Machines help GE in asset optimization and problem solving, data collection and insights, generating situational awareness and improved collaboration. For instance, for the year 2013, GE earned segmented profits such as $1.2 billion for transportation, $3.0 billion for healthcare, $4.3 billion for aviation, $2.2 billion for oil and gas, and nearly $5 billion for power and water – that is, a total profit of $15.7 billion.

How do motion detectors work?

Whether it is really a cat or a cat burglar trying to sneak into your house at night, a motion detector is a more prudent device to have around, rather than trying your luck with a baseball bat. The trick is in knowing what type of motion detector to use at what point, since there are so many varieties of them and that could be confusing. It helps to know how some of the more common types of motion detectors work.

Typically, there are two types of motion detectors – passive type and active type. The differentiation depends on whether a detector is injecting energy into the environment for detecting a change. Active types inject energy into their immediate environment, whereas, passive types do not. Both devices are simple electronic components.

Active type motion detectors can use light, microwaves or sound for detecting movement. The most common type of active motion detector is a beam of light crossing the door with a photo sensor on the other end. As soon as a person breaks the beam of light, the photo sensor detects the change for light reaching it and either rings a bell or flashes a light.

Many places have automatic door openers. These can detect when someone passes near and opens the door in response. A device above the door sends out bursts of microwave radio energy at periodic intervals. A sensor waits for detecting reflected energy. When a person moves into the range of the microwave energy bursts, the amount of reflected energy changes or the time taken for the reflections to arrive changes and the box triggers an arrangement that opens the door.

Pyroelectric sensors or Passive Infrared detectors can sense the heat given off by a human. To make the sensor sensitive to the temperature of a human body, the sensor must be capable of sensing skin temperatures of around 93°F or 37°C. Such sensors are typically sensitive to the infrared energy wavelengths of the range 8-12micrometers, since the human body radiates wavelengths between 9 and 10 micrometers.

To prevent the sensors triggering false alarms for example, a sidewalk cooling off at night, a pyroelectric type motion detector detects only rapid changes in its field of view. That makes these sensors insensitive to a person standing still. However, the amount of infrared energy changes rapidly when a person is moving or walking by, enabling the sensor to detect it easily.

Since infrared energy is a form of light, a plastic lens can very easily bend or focus it. That is how these sensors have a wide field of view. Most detectors have one or sometimes two sensors within them looking for changes in infrared energy. However, infrared sensors installed within a room are not very capable of detecting snoopers or peeping toms trying to peek in through a window. That is because a motion detector sensitive to infrared energy is unable to detect it through glass windows.

If you have a four-legged friend in your home, you have to get sensors that are pet immune, to make sure the friend is not mistaken for an intruder.

Teaching Raspberry Pi to teach itself

For most of us, learning is a part of life. Beginning at birth, we learn how to understand emotions, walk and talk as the primary steps in learning. For machines, although learning appears to be high-tech, it is not an isolated incident. We see incidents of machine learning around us almost every day without knowing. For example, machine-learning algorithms accomplish automatic tagging of Facebook photos and spam filtering of emails. Most of machine learning is a step in the direction of achieving artificial intelligence. Recently, a lot of interest has been generated by a new area of machine learning known as deep learning.

So far, only big data centers had confined this knowledge of deep learning, as deep learning technology depends largely on huge data sets. Only the big data-mining firms such as Microsoft, Facebook and Google had access to such large amounts of data. Now, a new startup Jetpac is planning to let everyone access this technology. Any person with a computing device can use their app to access deep learning technology, as the video on their website shows (https://www.jetpac.com/deepbelief). However, you may find that this technology is not so perfect. Just as the human brain, machines too suffer from optical illusions – confusing sidewalks with crossword puzzles, flutes with spiral bound notebooks and trash bags as black swans – see it below.

Pete Warden has done a great job of porting deep learning technology to the immensely popular, credit card sized, inexpensive single board computer, the Raspberry Pi or RBPi. The factor that has helped this process is that RBPi has a GPU with roughly 20GFLOPS of computing power, according to the documentation released recently by Broadcom, the manufacturers. That enabled Pete to port his SDK of Deep Belief Image Recognition to the RBPi.

If you would like your RBPi to be able to recognize things it sees around itself, follow the instructions here. However, for running the algorithm on the RBPi, you must allocate at least 128MB of RAM to the GPU and reboot the RBPi so that the GPU can claim the memory freed-up in the process. When you first run the program deepbelief on your RBPi, it will spew out a long list of different types of objects.

Thanks to the documentation about the RBPi GPU made public by Broadcom, Pete was able to write custom assembler programs for the 12 parallel ‘QPU’ processors that lurk within the embedded GPU. Additionally, the GPU makes heavy use of mathematics, which allows the algorithm process a frame in around three seconds. The technical specs of the graphics processor were released only a few months back, which has led to a surge of community effort to turn that into useable sets of examples and compilers.

Pete had to patch one of the existing assemblers heavily so that it could support more instructions. He had to create a set of helper macros so that programming the DMA controller was easier. Once these algorithms were tuned to the GPU’s internal method of working, Pete released them as open source.

Are drones invading your privacy?

Unmanned drones have proved to be a stealthy asset in the war on terror, making strikes on targets and collecting data on enemy movements. However, these small, nimble and nearly silent fliers can also be used to keep tabs on law-abiding citizens from nearby skies. This domestic use of drones is raising concerns about privacy violations including potentially violating the Fourth Amendment. Now APlus Mobile is planning to build a Linux-based Personal Drone Detection System. These will detect any nearby drone using a method known as Mesh Grid Triangulation.

The R&D division of APlus Mobile, the DDC or Domestic Drones Countermeasures, is planning to launch a device that will detect and track a drone aircraft that approaches within 50 feet. DDC has launched a Kickstarter project for building the Linux-based Personal Drone Detection System. They plan to make it available in November 2014, at $499 for the alpha test model, and in April 2015, at $699 for the beta test model.

DDC has a drone detection algorithm for which a patent is pending. The Personal Drone Detection System relies on this algorithm to work its magic. APlus Mobile will be using a MotherBone PiOne board-level Linux subsystem motherboard for building the device. The motherboard is an open spec PiOne type, which means it can fit either a BeagleBone Black or a Raspberry Pi single board computer.

The MotherBone PiOne is actually a part of the Primary Command and Control Module unit. This unit works in conjunction with two nodes of detecting sensors and establishes a mesh grid network. In turn, the network can triangulate the location of mobile transmitters. If you deploy more control modules and nodes, the network can cover a wider area.

The wireless mesh network and target triangulation work together. You can set up the nodes as far as 200 feet apart. Although the mesh network uses Wi-Fi to communicate, it is kept isolated from the user unlike the control module, which communicates with the user over Wi-Fi.

To detect the wirelessly enabled, mobile devices or drones, the sensor nodes use a frequency that ranges between 1 MHz and 6.8GHz. While detecting all known telemetry transmission frequencies, the system tries to determine if the mobile transmitter is actually a drone. All drones must transmit some telemetry data that allows it to navigate. Therefore, even if the drone is only storing recorded media and not transmitting it, it can be detected.

The biggest challenge for the drone detection algorithm will be in distinguishing between a jogger passing by with a cell phone and an actual drone. According to Aplus, the software does reduce false triggering. The system is designed to detect and trigger an alarm only if a drone is loitering nearby. Therefore, a jogger would have to stop for a while in front of the house for the device possibly to trigger a false alarm.

Once the device detects a drone hovering nearby, it sounds an alarm and simultaneously, sends a message on your mobile device. That should make you draw your infrared-resistant blinds and call for the police, unless the drone belongs to the police.

A Car Computer with the Raspberry Pi

There are many reasons one would want to make a car computer. Although one of the reasons might be the savings on the expenses of buying a branded one, the most plausible reason would be the thrill of making your own. What could be more exhilarating than to use the most inexpensive, credit card sized, single board computer, the Raspberry Pi or RBPi and turning it into a sophisticated car computer, ready to compete with the most expensive ones in the market.

That is exactly what Derek Knaggs did. He wanted a car computer and searched for one on the Internet – only to be put off by the large costs involved. As an RBPi enthusiast, he reasoned that his tiny RBPi had all the ingredients required to build one – flexible video and audio outputs HDMI and Composite RCA for video, HDMI and 3.5 mm audio jack for audio). Additionally, it has the complete flexibility of switching to any operating system simply by changing the SD card.

Derek made a list of the items he would need for his car computer – RBPi model B, a car DVD player, TFT monitors (7-inch models used, one for the front and one/two for the back seats), composite video cables, audio cables suitable for 3.5mm jacks), Wireless N USB dongle, Wireless mini keyboard and a micro-USB car charger.

Derek’s car already had a radio installed and he connected the audio output of the RBPi to the auxiliary port of the radio. That allowed the audio to be played via the car speakers, so he had stereo audio playing loud and clear. He placed the RBPi in the center console, so that he could route all the cables under the console, giving the whole arrangement a neat and clean look, without any cables hanging around.

For playing video on the RBPi, Derek used XBMC, which comes with the Raspbmc operating system. Inputs to the RBPi were controlled by the wireless keyboard, which also has a built-in mouse touchpad. The keyboard has an on-off switch, useful for saving its batteries. The Wi-Fi dongle gave Derek the freedom to connect to any wireless network. Of course, another option is to connect it to the mobile phone, provided it has the option to set up a portable Wi-Fi hotspot.

One of the TFT monitors connects to the RBPi, and although Derek chose to position it on the central console, you might want it behind on the headrest of one of the front seats. Since Derek already had a car DVD player fitted in, there was another TFT monitor available. If the TFT monitors have HDMI inputs, you may want to connect them via HDMI cables. TFT monitors typically come with RCA composite video inputs, so that should not be a problem, as RBPi has composite video outputs along with HDMI. However, as soon as you use one of the video outputs on the RBPi, the other switches off, so it is not possible to use two monitors at a time from the two types of video outputs on the RBPi.