When you turn Ojarumaru Man on, he says something (in Japanese) about the firefly on his hat and waves his tiny, 9-gram plastic arm up and down through 60 degrees of motion. Because of O-Man's peaceful, Zen-like demeanor, engineers wanted a completely silent method of actuation that would be cost-competitive with an inexpensive, single-speed motor. (In fact, the original design called for a traditional electromagnetic motor, but engineers rejected it because it was too noisy.) In this simple application, engineers mounted Oman's arm to the output shaft of a Nano-Muscle RS-70-CE actuator, which runs off of two AA batteries and uses shape memory alloys (SMAs) as the motive force. SMAs undergo a solid-state phase change when their temperature drops below a specific transition point, providing constant power output across the entire stroke length and a force-to-weight ratio on the order of 15 kgf/m2.
WEB Resources
Nanomuscle offers a new commercial development kit for its RS-70-CE actuator for $199.95 or toy development kit for $179.95. For details, go to http://rbi.ims.ca/3849-563
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Unlike his friends in engineering programs, blogger Jon Titus had little need for calculus except in a few of his college physical-chemistry labs and classes.
In the wake of the Chevy Volt fire investigations, sales are down, and General Motors' (GM) CEO Dan Akerson is blaming the downturn on a spate of bad publicity.
Thanks to embedded electronics, medical devices are getting smaller and smarter than ever. Pacemakers and implantable defibrillators are now able to call physicians. MRIs, CT scanners, and ultrasound machines are gaining mobility. And the venerable Band-Aid may soon be able to detect illnesses ranging from fevers to heart arrhythmias. On February 21, join Design News senior editor Charles Murray for a wide-ranging discussion, "Embedded Angles for Medical Products," which will explore the latest developments in medical electronics. The discussion will examine advances in medical device technology and offer an inside look at the embedded electronics behind it.
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