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M12 connector simplifies sensor and actuator applications

binder USA has announced a new two-piece M12 circular connector that offers versatility with several special features, including a square flange housing for easy assembly and a multi-position, lockable A-coding that supports variable cable installation. The new connectors simplify making secure sensor and actuator connections in applications such as factory automation and robotics.
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Thin film resistor for consumer and industrial electronics

Stackpole Electronics' CSRT2512-UP was developed to provide accurate, high-power current sensing for consumer and industrial electronic devices that exceed the capabilities of most 2512 case sizes available in the industry. The AEC-Q200-compliant CSRT2512-UP has unique thin film material properties and processing to provide higher continuous power ratings and higher pulse power ratings than other thin film chip resistors. Benefits include: high performance, high continuous and pulse power handling, and the known high reliability of thin film technology.
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Under-$100 Lidar named CES 2022 Innovation Awards Honoree

Cepton Technologies has been named a CES 2022 Innovation Awards Honoree in the Vehicle Intelligence & Transportation category for its Nova product, a miniature, wide-field-of-view lidar sensor for near-range applications. Nova is designed to help minimize perception blind spots to enhance advanced driver assistant systems and autonomous driving capabilities in modern vehicles. It enables high-res 3D imaging to accurately detect small children, on-road objects, protrusions, and road edges. The giant CES 2022 consumer electronics and technology trade runs Jan. 5-8, 2022, in Las Vegas.
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See all of the CES 2022 Innovation Awards Honorees.

Resolve EMI and EMC challenges with Ansys

EMA3D Cable solves complex EMI and EMC challenges related to high-intensity radiated fields, lightning strikes, radiated emissions and conducted susceptibility, and other issues. It is being used to build complete models of cars and planes, including every cable. Ansys HFSS is the world's foremost antenna design and modeling tool. Its comprehensive set of solvers allows engineers to address diverse electromagnetic problems ranging in detail and scale from passive integrated circuit components to extremely large-scale EM analyses, such as automotive radar scenes for advanced driver-assistance systems.
Read this informative Ansys blog.

Upgraded mechanical pressure switch portfolio

NOSHOK's new mechanical pressure switch program has been engineered to address a wider range of applications and provide a significantly expanded selection of process and electrical connection options. Each of the four new NOSHOK switch series offers vacuum, low-pressure, and high-pressure options; is CE compliant to suppress RFI, EMI, and ESD; and is RoHS compliant. In addition, NOSHOK has improved its production efficiency and expanded its inventory to better accommodate orders and provide faster delivery.
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Highest-rated current inductors for automotive Power over Coax systems

TDK's ADL3225VM inductors are for use in automotive Power over Coax (PoC) systems. Measuring 3.2 x 2.5 x 2.5 mm, they provide a compact solution for designers looking to reduce vehicle weight as manufacturers add more sensors and cameras to accommodate expanding automotive and advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) applications. The proprietary structural design and wire winding manufacturing process ensure high impedance over a broad bandpass of 1 MHz up to 1 GHz. The inductors are compliant with AEC-Q200 and achieve the highest-rated current in the industry for the 3225 size.
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Advanced circulators overcome mmWave design challenges

As communica-tions providers race to deliver on the potential of 5G, research and design projects are already looking toward 6G and beyond. However, a major hurdle awaits the impending move up the millimeter wave (mmWave) spectrum: a lack of acceptable mmWave components that can offer a wide bandwidth. Micro Harmonics has an answer.
Read the full article.

Antimicrobial switches disinfect themselves

Are switches that disinfect themselves too good to be true? It is possible. Antimicrobial coatings inhibit the growth of microorganisms and even kill them. When applied to switches, this technology is perfectly suited for medical technology, sanitation areas, and the food service industry. All completely sealed switches from SCHURTER (piezoelectric, capacitive, or ToF) are perfectly suited for this coating upgrade, which kills microorganisms effectively by oxidation using photodynamic self-purification technology.
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Expanded enclosure A/C inventory

Seifert Systems has completed their warehouse expansion, significantly increasing the types and quantity of enclosure air conditioners available. Air conditioners with popular cooling capacities within 1,000 to 21,000 BTU/hr are in stock and ready to ship. Among these are the Progressive, filterless SlimLine, and Compact Series of enclosure air conditioners as well as thermoelectric coolers. Seifert enclosure air conditioners come with a two-year warranty. SlimLine units are only 4.5 in. deep, and many Progressive units share the same size footprint for easier planning when needed for more than one application.
See what Seifert Systems has to offer.

Reversible-flow fans: Directional flow and speed control in one unit

Orion Fans has launched a series of micro-controller-based, up to IP68-rated, reversible-flow fans. By utilizing PWM signals to control fan speed, the fans provide engineers an innovative solution to some of their most challenging cooling requirements: speed and airflow direction controlled by one fan without supplementing excess wires or circuitry. Reversible-flow fans are a specialty design that enables unique applications. You may be surprised at their versatility.
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Cool Tools: Leica RTC360 3D laser scanner -- LIDAR for big jobs

The new Leica RTC360 laser scanner available from Exact Metrology makes 3D reality capture faster than ever before. With a measuring rate of up to 2 million points per sec, colored 3D point clouds can be completed in under 2 min. Automated, targetless field registration and seamless, automated data transfer from site to office reduce time spent in the field. The CAD models are generally used for factory/shop floor layout plans, power plant equipment changeouts, proof dimensioning, and much more. In addition to the 3D model, full spherical HDR imagining is appended directly to the point cloud, giving a photo-realistic effect to the data and allowing for virtual walkthroughs of the areas, shareable markups, geo-referencing, and meta-tagging. So many uses.
Learn more.

Eaton developing suite of 48-V technologies to help vehicle manufacturers meet new global emission regulations

Most vehicles have traditionally operated with a 12-V system, but with tightening fuel economy regulations and new, advanced power-consuming components being added, increasing power needs are driving the move toward 48-V systems.
Read the full article.

igus unveils new sensor for smart plastics predictive maintenance

igus has developed a sensor for its smart plastics software that calculates the remaining service life of energy chains, cables, linear guides, and plain bearings during operation. The i.cee:local sensor optimizes the life of the system, detects faults, allows them to be fixed at an early stage, and allows for maintenance to be planned in advance. This sensor can be integrated via the internet or without IoT connectivity via the local network, depending on customer requirements. Smart plastics sensors monitor abrasion, measure the pull/push force, and provide information about an imminent overload.
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Toshiba positively evaluates no-solder connector tech for IOT

Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage Corp. has developed two connector technologies that allow easy, solder-free assembly of small IoT nodes, which are regarded as essential for realization of the "Trillion-Node Engine," an open-source IoT platform that could connect billions of devices in the future.
Read the full article.

Ouster-Danfoss partner to bring lidar to off-highway vehicles

Ouster sensors will be the first lidar hardware to be offered through the Danfoss PLUS+1 Partner Program, which is engineered to expedite the development process and bring higher quality machines to market faster. This integration is intended for remote machine management, operator assistance, row following, obstacle avoidance, and task automation. The PLUS+1 Partner Program is a select group of companies with complementary products -- including microcontrollers, joysticks, hydraulic pumps, and radar sensors -- that integrate into PLUS+1 systems the same way all Danfoss hardware components do.
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'Poor man's qubit' can solve quantum problems without going quantum

By Kayla Wiles, Purdue University

It may still be decades before quantum computers are ready to solve problems that today's classical computers aren't fast or efficient enough to solve, but the emerging "probabilistic computer" could bridge the gap between classical and quantum computing.

Engineers at Purdue University and Tohoku University in Japan have built the first hardware to demonstrate how the fundamental units of what would be a probabilistic computer -- called p-bits -- are capable of performing a calculation that quantum computers would usually be called upon to perform.

The study, published in Nature on Sept. 18, introduces a device that serves as a basis for building probabilistic computers to more efficiently solve problems in areas such as drug research, encryption and cybersecurity, financial services, data analysis, and supply chain logistics.

Today's computers store and use information in the form of zeroes and ones called bits. Quantum computers use qubits that can be both zero and one at the same time. In 2017, a Purdue research group led by Supriyo Datta, the university's Thomas Duncan Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, proposed the idea of a probabilistic computer using p-bits that can be either zero or one at any given time and fluctuate rapidly between the two.

"There is a useful subset of problems solvable with qubits that can also be solved with p-bits. You might say that a p-bit is a ‘poor man's qubit,'" Datta said.

Whereas qubits need really cold temperatures to operate, p-bits work at room temperature like today's electronics, so existing hardware could be adapted to build a probabilistic computer, the researchers say.

The team built a device that is a modified version of magnetoresistive random-access memory, or MRAM, which some types of computers use today to store information. The technology uses the orientation of magnets to create states of resistance corresponding to zero or one.

For the first time, researchers have demonstrated a way to build a probabilistic computer. This circuit includes a modified version of a magnetoresistive random-access memory device (red) to interconnect eight p-bits. [Purdue University image/Ahmed Zeeshan Pervaiz]

 

 

 

 

Tohoku University researchers William Borders, Shusuke Fukami, and Hideo Ohno altered an MRAM device, making it intentionally unstable to better facilitate the ability of p-bits to fluctuate. Purdue researchers combined this device with a transistor to build a three-terminal unit whose fluctuations could be controlled. Eight such p-bit units were interconnected to build a probabilistic computer.

The circuit successfully solved what is often considered a "quantum" problem: breaking down, or factoring, numbers such as 35,161 and 945 into smaller numbers, a calculation known as integer factorization. These calculations are well within the capabilities of today's classical computers, but the researchers believe that the probabilistic approach demonstrated in this paper would take up much less space and energy.

"On a chip, this circuit would take up the same area as a transistor, but perform a function that would have taken thousands of transistors to perform. It also operates in a manner that could speed up calculation through the parallel operation of a large number of p-bits," said Ahmed Zeeshan Pervaiz, a Ph.D. student in electrical and computer engineering at Purdue.

Realistically, hundreds of p-bits would be needed to solve bigger problems -- but that's not too far off, the researchers say.

"In the near future, p-bits could better help a machine to learn like a human does or optimize a route for goods to travel to market," said Kerem Camsari, a Purdue postdoctoral associate in electrical and computer engineering.

The Purdue group is associated with the Discovery Park Center for Computing Advances by Probabilistic Spin Logic led by Joerg Appenzeller, who also recently annnounced the launch of Purdue-P. A patent application for this technology has been filed through the Purdue Research Foundation Office of Technology Commercialization.

The work was partially supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA); the Semiconductor Research Corp.; Japan's Council for Science, Technology and Innovation; the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science; and the Research Institute of Electrical Communication of Tohoku University.

Published December 2019

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