by Richard Mandel

The Electronics Materials Laboratory at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in California announced their development of MEMs-based technology for application in large all-optical switches. The switches are required to transfer data between major cities. A primary challenge for all-optical switches is that the light beam spreads as it travels over long distances, and requires the beam to be "steered" back into alignment. The PARC-based design uses MEMs-type mirrors that can be tilted to higher angles than traditional MEMs mirrors, allowing the incoming and outgoing optical fiber bundles to be spaced more closely. The device drives the mirrors with low drive voltage and power, as opposed to other devices that can use up to 1 kW for a large switch, effectively baking itself to an early demise. A feedback loop is used for mirror control. The first demonstration unit had a 1,156-mirror array size, with the company suggesting the ability to scale further to a 10K x 10K fiber port configuration. Circle 400 - Xerox PARC, or connect directly to their website at http://www.OneRS.net/102df-400

While toy companies have flooded the market with robot doggies and kitties, another company has developed an artificial eel. Not the latest pool toy, the device, developed by Ocean Power Technologies, Pennington, NJ, and funded by DARPA, harvests energy from the flow of water around it in a simple electromechancal fashion. The eel's body is about the size of a winter scarf and only a few millimeters thick. It is made from a piezoelectric polymer called polyvinyldine fluoride (PVDF), which produces a small amount of current as it flutters easily when anchored in the path of a turbulent flow. The energy produced is sufficient to trickle-charge a battery. This capability makes it attractive to the US Navy, which expects to use the eel to extend the life of sensors dropped in remote locations to measure the ocean's temperature and salinity for weather forecasting, as well as for subsurface surveillance microphones. Such devices relay their data via satellite, but can broadcast for only an hour with present battery technology, and turbine-driven dynamos tend to clog with detritus. The chief project engineer anticipates that the PVDF system will maintain operation for at least one year. Sub-contractors involved with this effort are the Autonomous Undersea Systems Institute, Princeton University, the Material Research Laboratory at Penn State University, and Cambridge Advanced Technologies and Simulations. Circle 401 - Ocean Power Technologies