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Aerospace

Silicon Microsphere Fabrication

The efficiency and methodology of coupling light into microcavities has improved exponentially in the last decade. One such advancement is coupling light onto silicon microspheres. The material, size, and shape...

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Briefs
Defense

Designing and Fabricating a Multiple-Decade Battery

There is a great need for energy sources that can power unattended sensors for more than a decade. Unattended sensors can be located in harsh and remote locations that are often dangerous for...

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Technology Update
Defense

Altair Optimizes 3D-Printed Structures for Complex, Lightweight Designs

Altair expects to better support the use of additive manufacturing (AM), or 3D printing, by releasing new OptiStruct solver capabilities for topology optimization. The...

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Technology Update
Defense

MTU Develops New Turbine Blade Material in Record Time

MTU Aero Engines announced in March that its internal experts and industry partners have jointly developed a new class of intermetallic, high-temperature materials for highly stressed...

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Articles
Defense

Deploying Next-Generation UAS Platforms with 3U VPX

More powerful. Lighter. Cooler. These are the key criteria for the design of Line Replaceable Units (LRUs) in next-generation Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) platforms, which continue to grow in...

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Articles
Unmanned Systems

UGVs — On the Cutting Edge of Thermal Management

Thermal management of unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) is more complex than other electronic equipment because they have to operate in harsh environments such as humid tropical rainforests or...

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Articles
Imaging

Controlling the Seas: Introducing a New Concept in Autonomous Surface/Underwater Vehicles

The boundary between the sea and sky is an important place to be. It’s the critical connecting layer for commercial and military information exchange...

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Articles
Aerospace

Connectivity in Robotic Systems

While many think of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or space probes and planet rovers when they think of unmanned systems, the field of robotics covers every environment known to man: sea, ground, air, and space....

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Application Briefs
Defense

Anti-Hacking Software for UAVs

Galois Portland, OR 503-626-6616 http://galois.com To address growing evidence that commercial Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), automobiles and other vehicles are vulnerable to hacking and sophisticated cyber...

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Application Briefs
Defense

Unmanned Naval Helicopter

Northrop Grumman Corporation Redondo Beach, CA 310-812-4321 www.northropgrumman.com The U.S. Navy has been conducting ship-board flight testing of the first operational MQ-8C Fire Scout unmanned helicopter delivered by...

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Application Briefs
Unmanned Systems

UAV Circuit Boards

Sunstone Circuits Mulino, OR 503-829-9108 www.sunstone.com Miki Szmuk is an aerospace engineer with big ideas for building better unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). As a doctoral student from the Controls Lab for Distributed...

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Briefs
Sensors/Data Acquisition

Infrared Stereo Calibration for Unmanned Ground Vehicle Navigation

Many challenges still persist in the area of autonomous (and even semi-autonomous) vehicle navigation for unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs). One challenge is in detecting and...

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Briefs
Aerospace

Simultaneous Vibration Suppression and Energy Harvesting for a Multifunctional UAV Spar

The goal of this work was to investigate using harvested energy to directly control the vibration response of flexible aerospace systems. Small,...

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Briefs
Manufacturing & Prototyping

Development and Evaluation of the Stingray Amphibious Maritime Unmanned Ground Vehicle

Every year, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps conduct thousands of Maritime Interdiction Operations (MIOs) to enforce embargoes, intercept contraband, prevent...

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Briefs
Software

Pushbroom Stereo for High-Speed UAV Navigation in Cluttered Environments

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) rely on an external motion-capture apparatus that gives the vehicles almost perfect state information at high rates. Major challenges in...

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Briefs
Defense

Modeling and Simulation of an Unmanned Ground Vehicle Power System

Robotic vehicles such as unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) have multiple sources of power, including batteries, fuel cells, combustion engines, ultracapacitors, and solar cells to...

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Products
Photonics/Optics

Laser Interferometer

4D Technology Corporation (Tucson, AZ) has introduced its newly improved AccuFiz compact laser interferometer for accurate, repeatable measurement of surface shape and transmitted wavefront quality. New features include...

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Briefs
Sensors/Data Acquisition

Selective, Sensitive, and Robust Electrochemical Detection of Anthrax

There exists an unmet need for rapid, sensitive, and field-stable assays for pathogen detection. Bacillus anthracis is the causative agent of anthrax poisoning. This Gram-positive bacterium secretes a tripartite toxin including a cell-binding protective antigen (PA), and the...

Products
Materials

Silicon Carbide Foam

Silicon carbide (SiC) foam from Goodfellow (Coraopolis, PA) provides the exceptional hardness, high-temperature durability and performance of solid silicon carbide, but in a lightweight foam structure. The matrix of cells...

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Products
Software

Dual-Node, Short-Depth 4U Chassis

Advantech (Irvine, CA) has launched the 4U, dual-node, short-depth (350mm), industrial chassis ACP-4D00 designed for machine automation applications that require two computers in one piece of equipment. The...

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Products
Manufacturing & Prototyping

Custom 19” Fan Tray

Verotec (Derry, NH) recently custom designed intelligent fan trays for a major defence project. The 19-inch rackmounted 1U trays have six fans, strategically located within the tray to maximise the cooling of critical...

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Products
Test & Measurement

Signal Conditioning Modules

Precision Filters Inc. (Ithaca, NY) has introduced a new family of signal conditioning modules for measurement systems built on National Instruments™ rugged, compact, low power cRIO™ platform. The four analog...

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Products
Manufacturing & Prototyping

Flange Couplings

RINGFEDER POWER TRANSMISSION (Westwood, NJ) has announced the launch of its new RfN 5571 series flange coupling for heavy industry. RINGFEDER® flange couplings provide a superior solution to standard press fits. Equipped with...

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Products
Manufacturing & Prototyping

Digital Meter

The New Technology Meter (NTM) from OTEK (Tucson, AZ) has everything you need to measure and control your process while operating with less than 50mW of power. OTEK’s NTM boasts a full tricolor bargraph with 2% resolution and...

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Products
Defense

Virtual Environment Tool Chain

The DiSTI Corporation (Orlando, FL) has commercialized their scalable tool chain and process for producing 3-D virtual maintenance training environments. Previously only available in conjunction with DiSTI’s...

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Products
Electronics & Computers

Rugged 1U MicroTCA Chassis Platform

VadaTech (Henderson, NV) now offers a rugged 6-slot MicroTCA chassis in a 1U height designed to meet MIL-STD- 901D and 810G for shock and vibration and MIL-STD-461F for EMI. The VT950 holds up to 6 Advanced...

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Products
Manufacturing & Prototyping

Titanium/Composites Brazing

Morgan Advanced Materials (Windsor, UK) announced that it now has the capability to braze carbon fiber, ceramics, composites, or other engineered materials directly to a titanium honeycomb. Carbon fiber and other...

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Products
Defense

8-Channel Portable Serial Recorder

Pentek, Inc. (Upper Saddle River, NJ) has announced a new recorder for the popular family of Talon® recording systems: the Model RTR 2736A multi-channel Serial FPDP (sFPDP) rugged portable recorder, suitable...

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Articles
Defense

Electronic Warfare Technology

Military electronic warfare (EW) systems including navigation, radar guidance, terrain mapping and others, require lightweight compact components, with radio frequency (RF) output power levels to several kilowatts...

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