Technology Trends

As it is often the case, a recent discovery just came out from a simple idea. By studying diseases in which the human body generates too much bone, UCLA researchers have discovered a natural molecule that can be used to generate new bone growth in patients who lack it. This new molecule has aptly been named UCB, or University of California Bone. This new protein for growing bones is more precise and has less side effects than the ones currently used by orthopedic surgeons to aid in bone repair. But if you suffer from a bone deficit today, you’ll have to wait almost ten years before an FDA approval and a commercial introduction of products based on this discovery. Read more…

Here is the beginning of this UCLA news release.

Bioengineering professor Ben Wu at UCLA’s Department of Bioengineering, and Kang Ting, Thomas R. Bales Professor at UCLA’s School of Dentistry, are developing a new molecule they’ve named UCB, or University of California Bone.

[Note: while I was doing my homework research for this entry, I discovered that Kang Ting was sometimes named Eric Ting. I wonder if he prefers to be called Kang or Eric.]

The core technology developed by Wu and Ting is potentially the most significant advancement in bone regeneration since the discovery of bone morphogenetic proteins by Dr. Marshall Urist at UCLA in the 1960s.

“For the average person, this new development potentially means faster, more reliable bone healing with fewer side effects at a lower cost,” Ting said. “In more severe cases, such as in children born with congenital anomalies, the new protein may offer an advanced solution to repair cleft palates, which involves bone deficiencies, and also aid in repairing other bone defects such as fractures, spinal fusion and implant integration.”

Before going further, here is an illustration showing the results of UCB.

On the right part of the image, you can see the bone defect, corrected by the UCB on the left side (Credit: UCLA School of Engineering).

Here is a link to a larger version (1,513 x 517 pixels, 123 KB).

As I mentioned above, UCB is more precise than the bone morphogenetic protein currently used.

With bone morphogenetic proteins, bone formation has been observed to occur at locations outside of the intended implant site, and tissue other than bone also has been reported. In contrast, UCB’s main effects appear to be more specific towards bone formation process, giving surgeons increased control over where bone forms. According to Wu, UCB is more specific because it works downstream from the body’s “master switch” for bone formation.

It’s nice to discover a useful new protein, but how do you move it near the bones when it has to do its work?

The team at UCLA is developing a carrier that is engineered for UCB activities in the biological environment. “It’s the right combination of carrier and protein that further increases the stability and activity of UCB,” Ting said. “For certain clinical applications, we will need to develop injectable options that are minimally invasive. For other clinical applications, we will need moldable carriers that can hold the UCB in place better.”

And when will this molecule be available to patients?

The team of UCLA researchers, under the business name Bone Biologics, already has begun forming partnerships that may assist in the development of appropriate carriers for UCB. Wu and Ting anticipate FDA approval and first sales of the product in the next seven to nine years.

For more information about Bone Biologics, you can read this article from the UCLA Daily Bruin.

Finally, Xinquan Jiang, a visiting scholar from Shanghai, China, and working in Ting’s Lab, won the prestigious 2005 Hatton Award given by the International Association of Dental Research (IADR) for this new technology.

Sources: University of California at Los Angeles news release, April 21, 2005; and various websites

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• Biotechnology
  
  
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Engineers at Purdue University have replaced the conventional evaporators used in our refrigerators, which can be one meter long over a large area, by “micro-channel heat sinks” which are just over a square inch. According to this news release, their devices can be attached to household fridges, but also to electronic components in military lasers, microwave radar and weapons systems. In fact, as future combat vehicles are expected to generate waste heat densities approaching 1,000 watts per square centimeter, new technologies like this one are necessary to dissipate these heat loads. And the same is true with the chips in your computers, even if the recent battle between AMD and Intel shows that chipmakers are increasingly paying attention to the heat generated by their microprocessors. So who will be the first to benefit from this new cooling technology, the military, your fridge or your computer? Read more…

First, here is a description of the problem.

Electronics for new weapons systems, as well as chips in future computers, will generate five to 10 times more heat than chips in conventional electronic products, requiring better cooling systems. Computers and other electronic equipment are typically cooled with bulky assemblies that use metal fins to dissipate heat and fans to circulate the hot air away from components. But electronic components in new weapons systems, such as advanced lasers and chips in future computers, will generate too much heat to be cooled with conventional systems that use fans, said Issam Mudawar, a professor of mechanical engineering who is leading the research.

So how did they solve this problem?

One possible solution is a “two-phase” cooling system – the same basic technology used in a conventional refrigerator — in which a liquid coolant absorbs heat, turns into a vapor and is then pressurized by a compressor and condensed back into a liquid to begin the cycle over again.

In work funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, Mudawar’s team has successfully incorporated the micro-channel heat sink into an ordinary refrigerator. The device, which was attached to a heating element that simulates a hot electronic component, has been tested with a refrigerant called R134a, which is used in household air conditioners and refrigerators.

Now, let’s go to some details about the technology which was developed at the Boiling and Two-Phase Flow Laboratory at Purdue University.

The micro-channel heat sink is a copper plate containing numerous grooves 231 microns wide — or about three times as wide as a human hair — and 713 microns deep. The tubes in conventional air conditioner evaporators have diameters measured in millimeters or centimeters, depending on the size of the unit, meaning the conventional tubes are several times larger than the micro-channels.

“This is really pushing the envelope in how small you can go with these channels and still have a working device,” Mudawar said. “But there is another issue. In conventional systems, the evaporator is actually a very long tube that is wound around many times. So the tube might be a meter in length or more. In the micro-channel heat sink, we are doing everything in 1 inch square.”

The news release doesn’t give any details about when the technology will be available, but it looks pretty sure that the military forces will use it before you.

For more information, the research work has been published in two parts by the International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer in its February 2005 issue (Volume 48, Issue 5, Pages 928-940 and 941-955) under the common title “Two-phase flow in high-heat-flux micro-channel heat sink for refrigeration cooling applications.”

Here are the links to the abstracts of the two parts of the paper, which are respectively focused on pressure drop characteristics and heat transfer characteristics.

If you don’t find the journal in your library, you can purchase the individual articles for $30 each. And that’s almost a bargain. The annual subscription fee for this journal is US$5,360!

Sources: Purdue University news release, April 13, 2005; and various websites

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Engineers from the University of Michigan have developed a snake-like robot that conquers obstacles. It is composed of 5 segments of 8-inch diameter each and weighs 26 pounds. It is currently piloted by a human operator. And it can maneuver in extremely rugged terrain, climbing stairs and pipes. “It moves by rolling, log-style, or by lifting its head or tail, inchworm-like, and muscling itself forward.” This robot will be used for industrial inspection and surveillance in hazardous environments, and also for military and urban search and rescue operations.

Here are the opening paragraphs of the U-M news release.

A virtually unstoppable “snakebot” developed by a University of Michigan team that resembles a high-tech slinky as it climbs pipes and stairs, rolls over rough terrain and spans wide gaps to reach the other side.

The 26-pound robot developed at the U-M College of Engineering is called OmniTread. It moves by rolling, log-style, or by lifting its head or tail, inchworm-like, and muscling itself forward. The robot’s unique tread design prevents it from stalling on rough ground, said Research Professor Johann Borenstein, the head of the mobile robotics lab at U-M.

Here is the home page of the OmniTread robot.

Here are more details on how the system works.

A human operator controls the snakebot via a joystick and umbilical cord, which also provides electric power, which sends commands to specially designed software. A smaller, but more self-contained version that is now under development will carry on-board power for one hour of tetherless operation.

The OmniTread is divided into five box-shaped segments connected through the middle by a long drive shaft spine that drives the tracks of all segments. Bellows in the joints connecting the sections inflate or deflate to make the robot turn or lift the segments. The bellows provide enough torque for the OmniTread to lift the two front or rear segments to climb objects.

And what can really do this robot?

In one test, the OmniTread climbed an 18-inch curb, which is over more than twice its height. It also crossed a 66-centimeter trench, which is half its length. In another test, it inched up a pipe by pushing against opposite walls.

For more information about the OmniTread serpentine robot, you can read this presentation (PDF format, 4 pages, 3.48 MB). The diagram of the future OT-4 comes from this presentation.

And if you have good bandwidth, you can watch this movie (Windows Media format, 6 minutes and 52 seconds, 37.4 MB).

Finally, this work appears in the March 18 edition of the International Journal on Industrial Robots, in a special issue on mobile robots, under the name “The OmniTread Serpentine Robot for Industrial Inspection and Surveillance.” Here is a link to the full paper (PDF format, 11 pages, 567 KB).

Sources: University of Michigan news release, March 22, 2005; and various pages at U of M

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Robots developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are working everywhere and can move without human assistance in a variety of settings, according to this article from the MIT News Office, “Robots serve humans on land, in sea and air.” For example, the famous PackBots were conceived at the MIT and are now used by the U.S. Army in Afghanistan and in Iraq. But engineers and robotic designers at MIT also are developing submarine-like vessels to help the U.S. Navy in mine warfare and battlespace preparation. And others are building ‘intelligent’ aircrafts, such as a ‘robochopper’ which would be better suited than surface robots to move in chaotic urban environments. Read more, especially about their ‘robotoddler’…

Please read the article mentioned above to learn more about robots working on land. This section mainly talks about Professor Rodney Brooks, known for the humanoid Kismet robot, but also for being one of the founders of iRobot, which produces the Roomba, a robotic vacuum cleaner for home use and the PackBots used by the U.S. Army.

But don’t miss this page about Rodney Brooks pet projects and this other one about the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) which plans to develop prototypes of autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots for exploration on the Moon and Mars.

Now, let’s go in the sea to check what robots can do there.

Professor Chryssostomos Chryssostomidis, director of the Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Laboratory (AUV Lab), envisions “robots filling the vast void of oceans, roaming around, observing, communicating, and reporting back.” His lab has spent the past 15 years developing AUVs that have carried out missions ranging from surveying shipwrecks to testing underwater navigation and communication software.

The lab developed the Odyssey class of submarine-like vessels, which evolved into AUVs produced commercially by Bluefin Robotics, a company that spun out of the AUV Lab and still works closely with it. BlueFin vehicles aid research, survey offshore oil fields, and assist the U.S. Navy in mine warfare and battlespace preparation.

If you want to know more about the Odyssey class of submarine-like vessels, here are two links to its history and to a photo gallery.

Finally, let’s look at the sky, for which another group is developing intelligent aircrafts, such as this helicopter.

Eric Feron and his research group in the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems are working on several projects that may lead to more airborne robots. Those projects include intelligent aircraft, communication among multiple air vehicles, and automated takeoff and landing.

The group has already made progress in two of these areas. The “robochopper,” a model helicopter outfitted with a sophisticated instrumentation box, can perform autonomous aerobatic maneuvers at the flip of a remote-control switch. Feron, an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics, also led the development of an intelligent aircraft guidance system that allows a pilot in one airplane to guide another unmanned airplane by speaking commands in English.

Here are two links to the 2002 announcement of this robotic helicopter, “MIT’s robotic helicopter makes first acrobatic roll” and to a gallery of pictures and videos on Aerial robotics.

And for more information about all these MIT robots, you can read the full March 2, 2005 issue of MIT Tech Talk (PDF format, 8 pages, 824 KB). It contains two articles, “Robot’s gait mimics toddlers’” (Pages 1 and 4), and “Robots serve humans on land, in sea and air” (Page 4).

Finally, if you’re interested by this ‘toddler’ but don’t want to load a PDF document, you also can read “Teams build robots that walk like humans” (February 17, 2005, but updated on March 2, 2005).

Sources: Lauren J. Clark, School of Engineering, MIT, March 2, 2005; and various websites at MIT and elsewhere

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With recent improvements in graphic cards and in powerful Linux-based PC clusters, virtual 3D prototypes are rapidly replacing actual physical prototypes in a wide range of industries, including early adopters such as aerospace or car companies. But now, software designers are also incorporating sound and tactile feedbacks to their Virtual Reality (VR) systems for real product development. In this long article, Desktop Engineering gives several examples of these new VR developments. But even if PC clusters and off-the-shelf graphic cards are cheap, a state-of-the-art VR facility such as an immersive CAVE can still cost more than one million dollars, because you need to build the viewing facility and buy expensive projection systems. However, costs are still decreasing and virtual prototyping is reaching the mainstream stage. Read more…

Here is the introduction of the Desktop Engineering article.

Once regarded as a pie-in-the-sky slice of science fiction requiring a full-face helmet-like headset, virtual reality (VR) is now fairly easily available, comfortable to use, and becoming affordable. In fact, it’s frequently used for product development in conjunction with CAD/PLM-based visualization solutions from the usual suspects — UGS, PTC, and Dassault Systemes.

In VR prototyping, the 3D image is often viewable with a sophisticated set of glasses that imperceptibly shift the wearer’s vision from one eye to the other using a rapid-fire shutter system synchronized to a computer. The technology can be used on platforms ranging from $2,000 PCs to four-, five-, or six-wall CAVE (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment) systems that can cost $400,000 and more for fully immersive visualization environments.

But now, new technologies allow engineers to use other senses than vision in their VR environments.

The addition of sound and touch feedback to virtual prototypes has begun to create a sense of realism that blends the virtual with the actual. In some cases — particularly among automotive users — actual vehicle seats and steering wheels are used with tracked 3D viewing, the sounds of simulated car radios synchronized with the visualizations. Haptic gloves provide force feedback to simulate the feel of the visualized car interior while the user manipulates controls.

As I mentioned above, immersive VR environments are still costly. Here are some details about state-of-the-art technologies.

In its immersive versions, VR costs a great deal of money — mostly for the projection system hardware and construction of the viewing enclosure. However, the software is also available for other, more affordable platforms.

“The software largely involves breaking up an image into different angles of viewing for CAVE type viewing,” says Stu Johnson, visualization product manager for UGS’s Teamcenter Visualization. “Or, if using a 20-foot by 8-foot wall, it takes a single image and sends different chunks out to each projector. With a power wall, the number of projectors can vary from one to almost any number. It’s possible to create a matrix of 64 projectors, with each one focusing into one small space for ultra high resolution.”

And here is the conclusion, from Diane Jurgens, IT manager of Strategic Planning and Benchmarking for General Motors.

“I see a broad extension of the technology for multiple purposes, including data sharing inside companies and with suppliers. Everyone, everywhere will have access to excellent visualization that has ever-better graphics.” That, in turn, spells a bright future for VR and virtual prototyping as designers continue to perfect their products before they see the light of day.

[Disclaimer: As a former employee of Silicon Graphics, I have had access to many VR large facilities around the world. And even if these installations can be costly, they're worth every dollar spent on them. I have to add that I'm not involved with this company in any aspect.]

Sources: Louise Elliott, Desktop Engineering, February, 2005; and various websites

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The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has unveiled its fourth generation of its Truck Stopping Technology since 2001. A small device mounted on a truck can be remotely controlled by law enforcement officials if they suspect the truck is hijacked and being used for a terrorist action. They’ll use a handheld controller to activate the device which will deploy the truck’s air brakes and bring the truck to a complete stop before attacking a nuclear plant or other sensitive facilities. The LLNL engineers also have developed antennas which can be put on sensitive buildings and which will activate the device if trucks seem to come too close. These devices cost about $800 apiece, but cannot be mounted on trucks before some changes in legislation, in California and elsewhere. Read more…

Here are the key points of the LLNL announcement.

The Laboratory, part of the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, today unveiled its latest version of the technology, a remote-controlled device that brings trucks to a screeching halt. The device was commissioned by and created for the California Highway Patrol to prevent tankers and other hijacked vehicles from becoming “bombs on wheels.”

By enabling remote control technology, the device can be used to protect buildings such as government facilities, power plants and stations, and other areas where sensitive materials or critical infrastructures are housed.

This technology has been developed by David McCallen (short bio), diector of the LLNL Engineering Technology Center for Complex Distributed Systems with the help of outside consultants.

How does this fourth incarnation of truck stopping technology work?

The remote controlled variation works much like a child’s radio-controlled toy. In a roadside emergency, patrolmen would use a hand-held controller to activate the device, which now sits behind the cab of a tractor trailer, to deploy the air brakes and bring the car to a screeching halt.

Laboratory researchers have taken the remote technology one step further by using a system of antennas that could be placed around various buildings. If a runaway truck tried to crash through the gates, the antennas, operating on a continuous signal, would activate the technology once the truck passed by, preventing any attack.

Press releases need to be optimistic, but will this technology be really deployed one day?

The devices cost approximately $800 apiece. The Laboratory, California Highway Patrol (CHP) and a commercial truck company already are testing an earlier impact version of the device on California highways. To have the devices automatically equipped on all commercial transportation vehicles will require legislation.

For more information about this technology, you can visit the Truck Stopping Device page at LLNL, which describes the history of the project and contains images and links to videos.

Sources: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) news release, February 22, 2005; and various LLNL websites

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