Researchers Designing Eye-Enhancing Virtual Reality Contact Lenses for Soldiers

As part of the SCENICC program, DARPA researchers are working on futuristic contact lenses that will offer a dual purpose. These lenses will allow users to focus on objects that are close up and far away simultaneously, while enhancing normal vision by allowing a wearer to view virtual and augmented reality images.
Currently being developed by DARPA researchers at Washington-based Innovega iOptiks are contact lenses that enhance normal vision by allowing a wearer to view virtual and augmented reality images without the need for bulky apparatus. Instead of oversized virtual reality helmets, digital images are projected onto tiny full-color displays that are very near the eye. These novel contact lenses allow users to focus simultaneously on objects that are close up and far away. This could improve ability to use tiny portable displays while sill interacting with the surrounding environment.
Developed as part of DARPA’s Soldier Centric Imaging via Computational Cameras (SCENICC) program, SCENICC’s objective is to eliminate the ISR capability gap that exists at the individual Soldier level. The program seeks to develop novel computational imaging capabilities and explore joint design of hardware and software that give warfighters access to systems that greatly enhance their awareness, security and survivability.
Source: DARPA
Image: DARPA

Scientists Develop “PV Value” to Accurately Appraise PV Systems

Sandia National Laboratories researcher Geoff Klise worked with Solar Power Electric to develop a tool that can be used to appraise photovoltaic installations on homes and businesses.

Scientists at Sandia National Laboratories and Solar Power Electric teamed together to develop a tool to appraise homes and commercial buildings with photovoltaic (PV) installations. Dubbed PV Value, this electronic form will serve as a standard methodology for appraisers, real estate agents and mortgage underwriters that need to accurately value PV systems.
ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico – Consistent appraisals of homes and businesses outfitted with photovoltaic (PV) installations are a real challenge for the nation’s real estate industry, but a new tool developed by Sandia National Laboratories and Solar Power Electric and licensed by Sandia addresses that issue. Sandia scientists, in partnership with Jamie Johnson of Solar Power Electric, have developed PV Value, an electronic form to standardize appraisals. Funded by the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, the tool will provide appraisers, real estate agents and mortgage underwriters with more accurate values for PV systems.
“Previous methods for appraising PV installations on new or existing construction have been challenging because they were not using standard appraisal practices,” said Geoff Klise, the Sandia researcher who co-developed the tool. “Typically, appraisers develop the value of a property improvement based on comparable properties with similar improvements as well as prevailing market conditions. If there aren’t PV systems nearby, there is no way to make an improvement comparison. When a PV system is undervalued or not valued at all, it essentially ignores the value of the electricity being produced and the potential savings over the lifetime of the system. By developing a standard methodology for appraisers when comparables are not available, homeowners will have more incentive to install PV systems, even if they consider moving a few years after system installation.”
The tool uses an Excel spreadsheet, tied to real-time lending information and market fluctuations, to determine the worth of a PV system. An appraiser enters such variables as the ZIP code where the system is located, the system size in watts, the derate factor – which takes into account shading and other factors that affect a system’s output – tracking, tilt and azimuth, along with a few other factors, and the spreadsheet returns the value of the system as a function of a pre-determined risk spread. The solar resource calculation in the spreadsheet is based on the PVWatts simulator developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which allows the spreadsheet to value a PV system anywhere in the U.S.
“With PV Value, appraisers can quickly calculate the present value of energy that a PV system can be estimated to produce during its remaining useful lifetime, similar to the appraisal industry’s income approach,” said Johnson. “Additionally, a property owner thinking about installing PV can now estimate the remaining present value of energy for their future PV system and what it could be worth to a purchaser of their property at any point in time in the event a sale of the property takes place before the estimated payback date is reached.”
The tool is being embraced by the Appraisal Institute, which is the nation’s largest professional association of real estate appraisers. “From my perspective as an appraiser, I see that this is a great tool to assist the appraiser in valuations, and it connects to the Appraisal Institute’s recent Residential Green and Energy Efficient Addendum. It’s an easy, user-friendly spreadsheet that will not bog the appraiser down with a lot of extra time in calculations, and if they fill out the addenda properly, they’ll be able to make the inputs and come up with some numbers fairly quickly,” said Sandy Adomatis, SRA, a real estate appraiser and member of the Appraisal Institute.
Although the tool is licensed for solar PV installations, it could be used for other large green features in a home that generate income, such as wind turbines. The spreadsheet, user manual and webinar explaining the tool are available for download at http://pv.sandia.gov/pvvalue.
Solar Power Electric located in Port Charlotte, Fla., is an electrical contracting and solar integration company specializing in the installation of commercial and residential photovoltaic systems.
Source: Sandia National Laboratories
Image: Randy Montoya, Sandia National Laboratories

Researchers Study Butterfly Flight Dynamics to Create Small Airborne Robots

Engineers at Johns Hopkins are studying butterflies using high-speed video cameras to gain a better understand of their flight dynamics. With funding from U.S. defense agencies, the researchers hope to use this knowledge to create micro aerial vehicles that will mimic the butterflies airborne maneuvers and carry out reconnaissance, search-and-rescue and environmental monitoring missions.
To improve the next generation of insect-size flying machines, Johns Hopkins engineers have been aiming high-speed video cameras at some of the prettiest bugs on the planet. By figuring out how butterflies flutter among flowers with amazing grace and agility, the researchers hope to help small airborne robots mimic these maneuvers.
U.S. defense agencies, which have funded this research, are supporting the development of bug-size flyers to carry out reconnaissance, search-and-rescue and environmental monitoring missions without risking human lives. These devices are commonly called micro aerial vehicles or MAVs.
“For military missions in particular, these MAVs must be able to fly successfully through complex urban environments, where there can be tight spaces and turbulent gusts of wind,” said Tiras Lin, a Whiting School of Engineering undergraduate who has been conducting the high-speed video research. “These flying robots will need to be able to turn quickly. But one area in which MAVs are lacking is maneuverability.”

To address that shortcoming, Lin has been studying butterflies. “Flying insects are capable of performing a dazzling variety of flight maneuvers,” he said. “In designing MAVs, we can learn a lot from flying insects.”

The butterfly research will aid the development of flying bug-size robots. Pictured is an insect-inspired flapping-wing micro air vehicle under development at Harvard. Photo provided by Robert J. Wood, associate professor, and Pratheev Sreetharan, Harvard Microrobotics Lab, Harvard University.

Lin’s research has been supervised by Rajat Mittal, a professor of mechanical engineering. “This research is important because it attempts to not only address issues related to bio-inspired design of MAVs, but it also explores fundamental questions in biology related to the limits and capabilities of flying insects,” Mittal said.
To conduct this study, Lin has been using high-speed video to look at how changes in mass distribution associated with the wing flapping and body deformation of a flying insect help it engage in rapid aerial twists and turns. Lin, a junior mechanical engineering major from San Rafael, Calif., recently presented some of his findings at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics. The student also won second-prize for his presentation of this research at a regional meeting of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
“Ice skaters who want to spin faster bring their arms in close to their bodies and extend their arms out when they want to slow down,” Lin said. “These positions change the spatial distribution of a skater’s mass and modify their moment of inertia; this in turn affects the rotation of the skater’s body. An insect may be able to do the same thing with its body and wings.”
Butterflies move too quickly for someone to see these wing tactics clearly with the naked eye, so Lin, working with graduate student Lingxiao Zheng, used high-speed, high-resolution videogrammetry to mathematically document the trajectory and body conformation of painted lady butterflies. They accomplished this with three video cameras capable of recording 3,000 one-megapixel images per second. (By comparison, a standard video camera shoots 24, 30 or 60 frames per second.)
The Johns Hopkins researchers anchored their cameras in fixed positions and focused them on a small region within a dry transparent aquarium tank. For each analysis, several butterflies were released inside the tank. When a butterfly veered into the focal area, Lin switched on the cameras for about two seconds, collecting approximately 6,000 three-dimensional views of the insect’s flight maneuvers. From these frames, the student typically homed in on roughly one-fifth of a second of flight, captured in 600 frames. “Butterflies flap their wings about 25 times per second,” Lin said. “That’s why we had to take so many pictures.”
The arrangement of the three cameras allowed the researchers to capture three-dimensional data and analyze the movement of the insects’ wings and bodies in minute detail. That led to a key discovery.
Earlier published research pointed out that an insect’s delicate wings possess very little mass compared to the bug’s body. As a result, those scholars concluded that changes in spatial distribution of mass associated with wing-flapping did not need to be considered in analyzing an insect’s flight maneuverability and stability. “We found out that this commonly accepted assumption was not valid, at least for insects such as butterflies,” Lin said. “We learned that changes in moment of inertia, which is a property associated with mass distribution, plays an important role in insect flight, just as arm and leg motion does for ice skaters and divers.”
He said this discovery should be considered by MAV designers and may be useful to biologists who study insect flight dynamics.
Lin’s newest project involves even smaller bugs. With support from a Johns Hopkins Provost’s Undergraduate Research Award, he has begun aiming his video cameras at fruit flies, hoping to solve the mystery of how these insects manage to land upside down on perches.
The insect flight dynamics research was funded by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Science Foundation.
Source: Johns Hopkins University
Images: Johns Hopkins University

DARPA’s HACMS Program Seeks to Create New Technology

DARPA’s The High-Assurance Cyber Military Systems program seeks to improve the security of embedded computer systems. To do this, researchers are looking to create new technology for the construction of systems by adopting a method-based approach to enable semi-automated code synthesis from executable, formal specifications.
Embedded computer systems play a part in every aspect of DoD technology. The software in these systems does everything from managing large physical infrastructures, to running peripherals such as printers and routers, to controlling medical devices such as pacemakers and insulin pumps. Networking these embedded computer systems enables remote retrieval of diagnostic information, permits software updates, and provides access to innovative features, but it also introduces vulnerabilities to the system via remote attack.
“The High-Assurance Cyber Military Systems (HACMS) program seeks to create technology for the construction of systems that are functionally correct and satisfy appropriate safety and security properties,” explained, Kathleen Fisher, DARPA program manager. “Our vision for HACMS is to adopt a clean-slate, formal method-based approach to enable semi-automated code synthesis from executable, formal specifications.”
In addition to generating code, HACMS seeks a synthesizer capable of producing a machine-checkable proof that the generated code satisfies functional specifications as well as security and safety policies. A key technical challenge is the development of techniques to ensure that such proofs are composable, allowing the construction of high-assurance systems out of high-assurance components.
Key HACMS technologies include semi-automated software synthesis systems, verification tools such as theorem provers and model checkers, and specification languages. HACMS aims to produce a set of publicly available tools integrated into a high-assurance software workbench, widely distributed to both defense and commercial sectors. In the defense sector, HACMS plans to enable high-assurance military systems ranging from unmanned ground, air and underwater vehicles, to weapons systems, satellites, and command and control devices.
Source: DARPA
Image: DARPA

SOLITAIRE Flow Restoration Device Improves the Removal of Stroke-Causing Blood Clots

Research presented at the American Stroke Association’s 2012 international conference shows that the SOLITAIRE Flow Restoration Device removes stroke-causing blood clots far better than the FDA approved MERCI Retrieve device. SOLITAIRE opened blocked vessels without causing symptomatic bleeding in or around the brain in 61 percent of patients and use of the device led to better survival rates.

An experimental device for removing blood clots in stroke patients dramatically outperformed the standard mechanical treatment, according to research presented by UCLA Stroke Center director Dr. Jeffrey L. Saver at the American Stroke Association’s 2012 international conference in New Orleans on Feb. 3.
The SOLITAIRE Flow Restoration Device is among an entirely new generation of devices designed to remove blood clots from blocked brain arteries in patients experiencing stroke. It has a self-expanding, stent-like design and, once inserted into a clot using a thin catheter tube, it compresses and traps the clot. The clot is then removed by withdrawing the device, thus reopening the blocked blood vessel.
In the first U.S. clinical trial of SOLITAIRE, the device opened blocked vessels without causing symptomatic bleeding in or around the brain in 61 percent of patients. The standard Food and Drug Administration–approved mechanical device — a corkscrew-type clot remover called the MERCI Retriever — was effective in 24 percent of cases.
The use of the new device also led to better survival three months after a stroke. There was a 17.2 percent mortality rate with the new device, compared with a 38.2 percent rate with the older one.
“This new device heralds a new era in acute stroke care,” said Saver, the study’s lead author and a professor of neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “We are going from our first generation of clot-removing procedures, which were only moderately good in reopening target arteries, to now having a highly effective tool. This really is a game-changing result.”
About 87 percent of all strokes are caused by blood clots blocking a blood vessel supplying the brain. The stroke treatment that has received the most study is the FDA–approved clot-busting drug known as tissue plasminogen activator, but this drug must be given within four-and-a-half hours after the onset of stroke symptoms, and even more quickly in older patients.
When clot-busting drugs cannot be used or are ineffective, the clot can sometimes be mechanically removed during, or beyond, the four-and-a-half–hour window. The current study, however, did not compare mechanical clot removal to drug treatment.
For the trial, called SOLITAIRE With the Intention for Thrombectomy (SWIFT), researchers randomly assigned 113 stroke patients at 18 hospitals to receive either SOLITAIRE or MERCI therapy within eight hours of stroke onset, between January 2010 and February 2011. The patients’ average age was 67, and 68 percent were male. The time from the beginning of stroke symptoms to the start of the clot-retriever treatment averaged 5.1 hours. Forty percent of the patients had not improved with standard clot-busting medication prior to the study, while the remainder had not received it.
At the suggestion of a safety monitoring committee, the trial was ended nearly a year earlier than planned due to significantly better outcomes with the experimental device.
Other statistically significant findings included:

• 2 percent of SOLITAIRE-treated patients had symptoms of bleeding in the brain, compared with 11 percent of MERCI patients.
• At the 90-day follow-up, overall adverse event rates, including bleeding in the brain, were similar for the two devices.
• 58 percent of SOLITAIRE-treated patients had good mental/motor functioning at 90 days, compared with 33 percent of MERCI patients.
• The SOLITARE device also opened more vessels when used as the first treatment approach, necessitating fewer subsequent attempts with other devices or drugs.

“Nearly a decade ago, our UCLA Stroke Center team invented the first stroke retrieval device — the MERCI Retriever — and now we are pleased to have helped develop and successfully test a superior, next-generation clot removing device,” said Dr. Reza Jahan, associate professor of radiology at UCLA and the study’s principal neurointerventional investigator, who also led the pre-clinical studies. “It is exciting to have a highly effective new tool that can improve the outcomes for more stroke patients.”
Source: Amy Albin, UCLA Newsroom
Image: UCLA Newsroom

Researchers at ESA Develop Augmented Reality Headset for Medical Diagnosis

The Computer Assisted Medical Diagnosis and Surgery System, CAMDASS, is a wearable augmented reality prototype. Augmented reality merges actual and virtual reality by precisely combining computer-generated graphics with the wearer’s view. CAMDASS is focused for now on ultrasound examinations but in principle could guide other procedures.

Examining astronauts in need of medical help while in space is about to get a lot easier. Researchers at the European Space Agency developed a head-mounted display for 3D guidance in diagnosing problems and performing surgery. By using a stereo head-mounted display and an ultrasound tool tracked via an infrared camera, CAMDASS merges actual and virtual reality by precisely combining computer-generated graphics with the wearer’s view.
A new augmented reality unit developed by ESA can provide just-in-time medical expertise to astronauts. All they need to do is put on a head-mounted display for 3D guidance in diagnosing problems or even performing surgery.
The Computer Assisted Medical Diagnosis and Surgery System, CAMDASS, is a wearable augmented reality prototype.
Augmented reality merges actual and virtual reality by precisely combining computer-generated graphics with the wearer’s view.
CAMDASS is focused for now on ultrasound examinations but in principle could guide other procedures.
Ultrasound is leading the way because it is a versatile and effective medical diagnostic tool, and already available on the International Space Station.

The CAMDASS headset being tried out on a plastic head during the October 2011 International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality in Basel, Switzerland.

Future astronauts venturing further into space must be able to look after themselves. Depending on their distance from Earth, discussions with experts on the ground will involve many minutes of delay or even be blocked entirely.
“Although medical expertise will be available among the crew to some extent, astronauts cannot be trained and expected to maintain skills on all the medical procedures that might be needed,” said Arnaud Runge, a biomedical engineer overseeing the project for ESA.
CAMDASS uses a stereo head-mounted display and an ultrasound tool tracked via an infrared camera. The patient is tracked using markers placed at the site of interest.
An ultrasound device is linked with CAMDASS and the system allows the patient’s body to be ‘registered’ to the camera and the display calibrated to each wearer’s vision.
3D augmented reality cue cards are then displayed in the headset to guide the wearer. These are provided by matching points on a ‘virtual human’ and the registered patient.
This guides the wearer to position and move the ultrasound probe.
Reference ultrasound images give users an indication of what they should be seeing, and speech recognition allows hands-free control.
The prototype has been tested for usability at Saint-Pierre University Hospital in Brussels, Belgium, with medical and nursing students, Belgian Red Cross and paramedic staff.
Untrained users found they could perform a reasonably difficult procedure without other help, with effective probe positioning.
“Based on that experience, we are looking at refining the system – for instance, reducing the weight of the head-mounted display as well as the overall bulkiness of the prototype,” explained Arnaud.
“Once it reaches maturity, the system might also be used as part of a telemedicine system to provide remote medical assistance via satellite.
“It could be deployed as a self-sufficient tool for emergency responders as well.
“It would be interesting to perform more testing in remote locations, in the developing world and potentially in the Concordia Antarctic base. Eventually, it could be used in space.”
Funded by ESA’s Basic Technology Research Programme, the prototype was developed for the Agency by a consortium led by Space Applications Services NV in Belgium with support from the Technical University of Munich and the DKFZ German Cancer Research Centre.
Source: European Space Agency
Image: ESA/Space Applications Service NV

Scientists Develop Material that Absorb Carbon Dioxide from the Air

By using fumed silica impregnated with polyethlenimine, researchers at the USC Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute aim to recycle harmful excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Their new material can absorb carbon dioxide from both dry and humid air and can release it simply by heating it up. With ongoing research, the scientists hope this technology will help turn carbon dioxide into a renewable fuel source for humanity.

A team of USC scientists has developed an easy-to-make material that can scrub large amounts of carbon dioxide from the air.
One day in the future, large artificial trees made from the material could be used to lower the concentrations of the greenhouse gas in the Earth’s atmosphere. Until then, the material can be used to scrub the air inside submarines and spacecraft, as well as certain kinds of batteries and fuel cells.
The material is the latest advance in an ongoing project at the USC Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute that aims to recycle the harmful excess of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere into a renewable fuel source for humanity – an anthropogenic (caused by human activity) chemical carbon cycle. The institute is housed at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.
The project seeks to solve two of the world’s greatest problems at once: the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases and the dwindling supply of fossil fuels burned to create that issue.
“Carbon dioxide is not a problem,” said George Olah, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry atUSC Dornsife. “Nature recycles it. Mankind should too.”
Olah collaborated on the project with fellow corresponding authors G. K. Surya Prakash and Alain Goeppert, as well as Miklos Czaun, Robert B. May and S. R. Narayanan. The results were published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society in November.
Olah described his work on the anthropogenic carbon cycle as the most important work of his career – eclipsing even his work on carbocations in superacids that earned him a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1994.
The researchers’ new material is a fumed silica (the thickening agent in milkshakes) impregnated with polyethlenimine (a polymer) – and was found to absorb carbon dioxide well from both dry and humid air. Once the carbon dioxide is captured, the material can be made to release it simply by heating it up.
Though the work is ongoing, Olah and Prakash hope to find a low-cost, low-energy method of turning the captured carbon dioxide into methanol – which can be burned as a fuel source and used as a chemical feedstock.
“It is basically assuring a long-lasting renewable source of one of the essential elements of life on Earth,” Olah said.
The research was supported by the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute, the U.S. Department of Energy and the department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy.
Source: University of Southern California
Image: Pamela J. Johnson