This section was edited by Associate Editor Jeffrey Winters

GPS FOR THE MOON

When the Apollo astronauts explored the lunar surface, getting around wasn't as easy as it looked. Even though the astronauts limited their roving to a few acres close to the lander, they often had trouble navigating. Visual clues to one’s location that we on Earth take for granted, such as the apparent size of a car in the distance or the texture of grass on a lawn, were entirely absent. What looked like a good-size rock in the middle distance could turn out to be a giant boulder much farther away. Without some sort of positioning system, an astronaut on missions NASA hopes to begin sometime in the next decade could become disoriented, or even lost.

To combat this, NASA has awarded more than a million dollars to researchers at Ohio State University in Columbus to develop a spatial orientation system for use on the moon. Scheduled to be completed by 2011, the new system will be designed to seem quite similar to the familiar Global Positioning System to the astronauts who use it.

Of course, the heart of GPS is the dozens of satellites in Earth orbit beaming down coded signals. It would be ungainly and expensive to replicate such a constellation of satellites for the moon, so engineering professor Ron Li and his colleagues will have to use other sorts of data to find the astronauts’ position.

The system will combine signals from beacons mounted on the lunar home base as well as on free-standing pylons with data garnered from inertial navigation sensors mounted on astronauts’ space suits and vehicles. All this will be integrated with three-dimensional maps of the lunar terrain derived from satellite images to pinpoint an astronaut’s position at any given moment. The researchers have dubbed the sensor network the Lunar Astronaut Spatial Orientation and Information System.

The plan is to build a prototype system in the next year or two and perform operational tests in a remote location such as the Mojave Desert. If successful, the system would begin astronaut trials by 2010.

This won’t be the first space navigation job Li has done. He helped develop the software that helped the rovers Spirit and Opportunity navigate across the surface of Mars.

GETTING THE LEAD OUT OF YOUR FOOT

With gasoline prices remaining markedly above levels seen only a few years ago, motorists may be keen to find ways to reduce their gas consumption. But one recommended measure—driving at slower, steadier speeds with more gradual acceleration—is hard for many people who learned to drive when aggressive driving was the norm. In August, Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. unveiled a technology intended to gently nudge drivers toward more economical habits.

Called the ECO Pedal, the system is to be incorporated in a car’s accelerator. When activated, the system will provide a push back on the pedal if excess force is being applied—for instance, while accelerating away from a stoplight. The system is integrated with a measurement of fuel consumption rates and transmission efficiency during acceleration and cruising.

In addition, an indicator on the dashboard will signal when the motorist is driving in a less-than-fuel-efficient manner. A green light on the dash will begin to blink if the instantaneous fuel consumption begins to rise and turn amber if the problem remains chronic.

The company says that internal research shows that use of the ECO Pedal system could reduce fuel consumption by as much as 10 percent. Nissan hopes to commercialize the system in time for the 2010 model year.

MOUSE IN THE MOUTH

When researchers say that the tongue has a direct nerve connection to the brain, it makes perfect sense. Think of all the times that we unthinkingly blurt out secrets. But what they really mean is that, unlike the use of arms and legs, people who have suffered severe spinal cord injuries can still have perfect control of their tongues. Now, engineers are using that ability to create a new technology that could help profoundly disabled people live more independent lives.

Maysam Ghovanloo, a professor at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, described the Tongue Drive system at a conference in June. A magnet the size of a grain of rice would be implanted or attached to the tongue. As the tongue moves, the motion of the magnet would be picked up by sensors mounted on a helmet or in a dental attachment. This signal would then be sent via wireless transmission to a computer that decodes the data.

Because of the tongue’s flexibility and the precision with which most people can move it (which are skills critical for the ability to speak), the engineers believe that the Tongue Drive could enable users to make complicated “gestures” quickly. A double tap on the front teeth, say, might be the equivalent of a mouse click, while dragging the tongue across the roof of the mouth could be interpreted by the system as scrolling.

In trials of the system, able-bodied research subjects were able to signal six different commands with almost 100 percent accuracy after just five minutes of training. Able-bodied individuals have also been able to control a wheelchair using only the Tongue Drive.

BIOFUEL BAROMETER

Large petroleum refiners can pretty much guarantee that one gallon of gasoline will be the same mixture of hydrocarbons as the next. But makers of biodiesel tend to be small companies making up relatively tiny batches of fuel. That makes it expensive to test the quality of biodiesel.

Small production runs of biodiesel can vary widely in quality.

A Wisconsin-based technology company recently launched an analyzer that may change that. Paradigm Sensor’s hand-held biodiesel analyzer is designed to supplement cumbersome laboratory testing by providing cheap, fast, and easy measurements of critical substances in the fuel.

Because of the way in which bio-diesel is usually made, glycerin, a co-product, must be removed before the fuel can be used. Excess glycerin can damage a conventional diesel engine. Unfortunately, not all biodiesel manufacturers are as diligent as they need to be in purifying the fuel before shipping; one government-sponsored study found that more than half of biodiesel samples were not within the specified quality standard.

Paradigm’s Q-100 sensor measures the glycerin levels in a small fuel sample using an impedance spectroscopy technology. In addition, the analyzer can also test for methanol, blend percent, and acid number.

The device is intended to be marketed not only to producers, who might want to use it for quality control purposes, but for large-scale purchasers, such as fleet owners, and regulatory agencies.

ACID TEST

The chemistry of Earth’s oceans is changing: In recent decades, the average level of acidity has increased, a trend that has the potential to endanger many sea animals. Reports in the journal Science suggest that acid from dissolved carbon dioxide is found in upwelling ocean water and that such upwellings could corrode the shells of sea urchins, abalone, and other sea creatures.

To get a better feel for how serious this problem is, marine chemists are investing in a new sensor array designed to monitor the ocean’s pH balance. Sunburst Sensors, a Missoula, Mont.-based technology firm, has developed a device known as the Submersible Autonomous Moored Instrument. The SAMI will hang suspended from buoys in several hundred feet of water. According to University of Montana researcher Mike DeGrandpre, who developed the concept with Sunburst, the sensors will enable marine scientists to monitor pH levels for months at a time, and help them understand both the natural range of variability in acid levels and the processes working to change them.

Sunburst and the University of Montana were awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the Office of Naval Research in June in conjunction with the SAMI technology. The $980,000 grant is intended to help promote design changes in the ocean monitoring system to make it more available commercially.

ADDING SOME ‘VROOM’ TO EVs

Forget never having to head to the gas station: One of the best possible benefits of driving an electric vehicle is the quietness of the car. Imagine driving down the highway accompanied only by the sound of the wind whistling by.

But all that silence does come at a potential cost. Engineers at Lotus Cars Ltd. in Norfolk, England, have been working on aspects of the Tesla electric sports car, due to reach the market before the end of the decade. As they have driven around the test site in electric prototypes, the engineers have had some near-misses when people have stepped into the path of the oncoming vehicle.

Spurred by these near-accidents—and by concerns from advocates for the blind, who worry that visually impaired people may be endangered by hybrids and electric vehicles—engineers at Lotus have done something both simple and counterintuitive: They have added the sound of engine rumble to an otherwise quiet car.

“Some people have said that this is a perverse thing to do,” said Colin Peachey, chief engineer at Lotus. “We’ve gone to a lot of trouble to make a quiet electric car. And that’s one of the things people like about electric vehicles. Noise from cars can be seen as noise pollution.”

Electric cars, such as this Tesla prototype,
run so quietly that they sneak up on pedestrians.

For many years, of course, automakers have striven to make their cars quieter. Lotus, for one, has developed a noise cancellation technology that actively measures road noise from sensors mounted on the suspension. Combined with data from the engine, the system creates a model of the noises entering the passenger compartment. Using the speakers of the car stereo, an out-of-phase soundwave of that model is piped into the car’s interior, interfering destructively with the environmental noise. The effect cancels out much of the outside noise.

But a completely quiet ride may not be to everyone’s taste. For sports car drivers, the sound of a large engine is part of the attraction. So Lotus also developed synthetic engine noises that can be piped into the interior, providing simulated sounds of, say, a V8 engine.

Beginning earlier this year, that technology has been adapted for use in electric vehicles. Front-mounted speakers will project a narrow beam of typical car noise ahead of the vehicle; visually impaired (or simply inattentive) people can use this sound information to gauge the distance and speed of the oncoming automobile. “A normal car can be heard from about 36 feet away,” Peachey said. “But a hybrid can be heard from only 11 feet.” 

Because the sound is directed forward, an electric car using the system will seem noisy only to people in front of it. “Once it’s gone past,” Peachey said, “it sounds as quiet as an ordinary hybrid electric vehicle.”
The system is so simple, Lotus engineers say, that automakers could retrofit it onto existing models. Soon, perhaps, anyone will be able to drive a car that sounds like a Lamborghini, even if it’s really a Prius.

ROBOTIC TASTER

As any wine snob will tell you, it takes years to train a palate refined enough to fully appreciate the difference between a Château Mouton Rothschild and Two-Buck Chuck. But researchers in Spain and Germany may have found a way to automate the process. Using a six-sensor array, the team has developed a method that not only can tell the difference between a Chardonnay and a Malvasia, but can even identify the vintage.

Artificial tongues have been developed over the past decade, and Anritsu Corp. of Japan has a commercial version that uses potentiometric sensors to discern the five basic tastes: sweetness, saltiness, bitterness, sourness, and umami, which is a taste associated with meat and cheeses. Engineers have held out great hope that such sensors would enable greater quality control in food processing facilities, enabling technicians to “taste” the ingredients or even the final products without introducing subjective human factors.

According to Cecilia Jiménez-Jorquera, an engineer at the Barcelona Institute of Microelectronics, and her colleagues, the wine industry has a great need for a lightweight, automated sensor that can distinguish subtle differences in flavor. Not only could such a device help in the production of wines, but it could help catch frauds trying to pass off inferior varieties as superior vintages.

The researchers used an array of ion-sensitive field-effect transistors incorporated into a single silicon chip. The array was tuned so that it could detect relative levels of substances, such as sodium, potassium, calcium, copper, and silver. Then the team ran analyses of nine samples of four different kinds of wine. Based on the readings from the multisensor array, the researchers were readily able to distinguish among the varieties.

Various wines can be classified based on their principal components, using data from a multi-array sensor chip. Various wines can be classified based on their principal components, using data from a multi-array sensor chip.

The key, of course, isn’t just the sensor, but the model created from the data of the tested samples. To demonstrate this, the researchers fed in data from a batch of 2004 vintages of various wines; once the distinguishing characteristics of 2004 wines were determined, data from the multisensor array could be used to easily discern any 2004 wine from a 2005 wine.

To be sure, such work could be done by sending wine samples to a laboratory. But the speed and accuracy of the multisensor array opens up all sorts of possibilities for creating hand-held wine-testing devices. Indeed, it’s not so far-fetched to think that in the future, instead of presenting a wine cork for inspection, a sommelier will instead offer the readout from a wine scanner.