In honor of the holiday season, the Product Design & Development (PD&D) staff would like to thank all of its loyal readers. We appreciate your engagement, humor, and most of all your thoughtful comments.
While PD&D has undergone a few changes this past year, such as the transition to a new website design, our content has remained as relevant and insightful as ever. In honor of 2015, we’d like to look back upon some of our favorite stories of the year.
1. Designing a Personal Robot
Jibo, “The World’s First Family Robot,” raised more than $2 million on the crowdfunding platform Indiegogo, making it one of the most funded projects in the site’s history.
2. The World’s First All-Electric Satellite
On December 23, 2014, The Boeing Company was assigned the patent for a “Multiple Space Vehicle Launch System.” Originally filed in 2012, the patent describes a launch system with two space vehicles attached to one another.
3. Stop, Collaborate & Listen
Screening newborn infants for hearing loss is a relatively new practice that didn’t become common in the United States until the mid-to-late 1990s.
Before its introduction, children often weren’t diagnosed with congenital hearing loss until they were three years of age or older. Late hearing impediment identification can translate into delayed speech and language development. Approximately 25 years ago, Natus Medical identified these problematic statistics and sought to develop hearing screeners for newborns.
4. Replacing the Humvee
Lockheed Martin began its foray into the tactical wheeled vehicle market in 2004. Two years later, after purchasing HMT vehicles LTD, Lockheed Martin was awarded a contract for the Army Future Tactical Truck System Army Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD).
The JLTV program was born soon after when the U.S. Congress directed the U.S. Army and Marine Corps to replace the High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV) – the vehicle commonly known as the Humvee – which has been in use since 1985.
5. Programming Intelligent Underwater Robots
In order to give autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) more cognitive capabilities, engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a new programming approach that allows humans to identify high-level goals, while the vehicle performs the decision making to best accomplish them.
6. Boeing’s Sweet Vision for SUGAR Concepts
NASA’s Fundamental Aeronautics Program was launched with the goal of visualizing future passenger airplanes with greatly reduced fuel consumption, noise, and emissions. The concept vehicles proposed could potentially enter service within 15 to 20 years.
One of these concepts, the SUGAR Volt, is being developed through the Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft Research (SUGAR) program, a line of research being pursued by Boeing as part of NASA’s Fundamental Aeronautics Program.
7. Turning the Human Hand into a User Interface
Project Soli is a gesture radar small enough to fit in a wearable device that captures the motions of fingers and hands at resolutions and speeds of up to 10,000 frames per second – essentially turning a hand into a virtual dial or touchpad.
8. 3D Printing a Functional Steel Bridge
Standard 3D printing technology is confined within a build platform’s parameters, often limiting the size of printable objects. While today’s 3D printers are capable of printing household items, aircraft engine parts, and even medication, complex architecture is still a relatively new undertaking.
Now, Dutch research and development company MX3D plans to take a new 3D printing technique to the heart of Amsterdam by printing an ornate metal bridge over a downtown canal.
9. Flimmer in the Sky Keeps on Soaring
Nature has long been an inspiration for designers and engineers. So when researchers at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) were experimenting with flapping propulsion mechanisms for autonomous underwater vehicles, they naturally turned to fish for inspiration.
Specifically, the team had been developing the Wrasseinspired Agile Near-shore Deformable-fin Automaton, or WANDA, a portable AUV with robotic fins. However, the design was not conducive to long distance travel, because while flapping is a highly maneuverable method of traveling underwater, it’s not particularly efficient for traveling at fast speeds. Thus, the team turned to another biological muse, the bird.
10. The Worst Toys of 2015
On the 170th episode of Engineering Newswire, the World Against Toys Causing Harm, or W.A.T.C.H., released its 43rd annual “10 Worst Toys” report. So, once again, we bought them.
