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Why a soccer kick bends the ball path: SOLIDWORKS simulation

With SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation, you can virtually test a ball's flight path and see the science behind its amazing trajectory. Visualize anything you want to test, including the physics that make a ball curve and dip, to optimize performance and reduce physical testing. See the SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation study setup and learn about the Magnus effect where a spinning object moving through a fluid curves away from its straight path. [Credit: Screenshot courtesy of SOLIDWORKS]
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Lightning-fast in-line verification, high-performance barcode reading

The Omron VHV5 Barcode Reader now combines high-performance barcode reading and calibrated ISO verification in one device. Replacing offline sample checks, it delivers 100% inline verification at production speeds up to 1,200 parts per minute. With flexible lighting, the VHV5 easily inspects labels and Direct Part Marks, even on challenging curved or irregular surfaces.
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How to choose the right industrial Ethernet switch

Antaira Technologies breaks down 10 mission-critical capabilities separating industrial-grade switches from commercial compromises. Even if you aren't in IT engineering, you will find valuable networking knowledge in this guide to protect vital infrastructure.
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New CAM software cuts robotic machining deployment

At Automate (Booth #4476), RoboDK will showcase RoboDK CAM, which generates robotic machining programs directly from CAD files. Designed for easy deployment, it cuts setup time by up to 40%. Live demonstrations will show users how to create collision-free robot motion straight from CAD data, eliminating manual line-by-line coding.
Learn more about RoboDK CAM.

AI Tools You Can Use: What is OpenClaw? How do I get it and use it?

OpenClaw is trending big time right now, but what is it? The YouTubers over at Create a Pro Website run through the basics of what you need to know and how to implement it. Basically, OpenClaw is a next-gen 24/7 AI assistant that lives on your computer and can perform actions for you. You talk to it through a chat app. You can set it up to do real work such as alert you to important emails, answer emails for you, manage your calendar and travel, and so much more. There is a great intro video here and also a longer, very thorough step-by-step video to setting up OpenClaw.
View the OpenClaw intro video.
View the OpenClaw setup video.

New! 6-digit programmable display/controller

Bristol Instruments has released the OM 403UNI Series displays/ controllers, allowing users to monitor two or three simultaneous functions. Configured via OM Link software or front-panel buttons, they feature four- or six-digit displays with +/-0.05% of f.s. range accuracy. They function as numeric/bar-graph displays, controllers, data recorders, or accumulators. Additionally, they detect and alert users to error conditions like broken sensor wires.
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Mini edge AI systems for vision, generative AI

As enterprises transition from PoC to real-world edge AI deployment, Aetina has launched its Mini Series Edge AI systems. Powered by NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano and NX modules, these compact, fanless systems deliver high-performance vision and generative AI inference. Engineered for demanding industrial environments, they offer flexible camera connectivity, space-saving designs, and long-term reliability to accelerate smart infrastructure.
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Thermal imaging on the quality control line

On a high-speed food and beverage line, what you can see is not always what is happening. Thermal imaging adds a different layer of control. Instead of relying on surface appearance, it measures heat distribution as seals are formed and products move through the line, providing continuous, 100% in-line inspection instead of just sampling.
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Built for the test bench, ready for the field

FUTEK's IDC150 Signal Conditioner packages high-performance signal conditioning in a rugged aluminum enclosure. Built for engineers needing accurate, synchronized data from strain gauge sensors, it fits prototyping and lab environments. The device connects seamlessly to existing setups and pairs with SENSIT software and Python APIs. It is ideal for compact, high-performance digital sensor evaluation.
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Automotive lighting systems simplified, optimized

The new MLX81119 from Melexis is an 18-channel LIN RGB LED controller with an integrated DC/DC converter, designed to simplify and optimize automotive lighting systems. By generating the LED supply voltage locally on chip, this unit significantly reduces power dissipation, external components, and space requirements in increasingly dense vehicle applications such as door panels, dashboards, and charge-port lighting.
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How healthy is your machine? Moisture-in-Oil Sensor

iST's Moisture-in-Oil Sensor is a compact, digital RH/T module that accurately and continuously monitors the water content in oils and fuels. This sensor does not simply measure the absolute water content -- it measures the relative saturation level in % RH or water activity aw in %. This means you get a direct picture of the current oil quality and can react in time. Applications include: marine engines and gearboxes, commercial and rail vehicles, wind turbines and generators, drilling and paper machines, and more. Eval kit available.
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World's first native color lidar sensors

Ouster Rev8 features the world's first patented native color lidar sensors. For the first time, a single lidar sensor can understand road signs, interpret brake lights, or simply capture the richness of planet Earth in survey-grade, colorized maps. Based on patented Ouster Silicon with embedded Fujifilm color science, the L4 chip boasts 42.9 GMACs of processing power, detection of up to 20 trillion photons per sec, and a 40-kHz measurement rate with picosecond timing precision. Sees up to 200 m.
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Real-world applications: 3D camera ensures precise aircraft cabin drilling

In modern aircraft production, precision is everything. In this application article, learn how an Ensenso 3D camera integrated into an automated process chain ensures accurate detection and alignment of drilling positions in aircraft cabin assembly using the CAD data of the aircraft frame.
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What are Onshape Custom Features?

Certified Onshape Professional Too Tall Toby explains how to supercharge your workflow using community-created tools. In this insightful tutorial, he dives into the world of FeatureScript -- the powerful coding language behind Onshape. Learn where to find new scripts and how to use them. Save time. Learn new skills, shortcuts, and maybe even better ways to do things. Incorporate Custom Features into your everyday work. Very useful.
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What can you do with touchless magnetic angle sensors?

Novotechnik has put together an informative video highlighting real-world applications for their RFC, RFE, and RSA Series touchless magnetic angle sensors. You may be surprised at the variety of off-highway, marine, material handling, and industrial uses. You'll learn how they work (using a Hall effect microprocessor to detect position) and their key advantages, including eliminated wear and tear on these non-mechanical components. We love when manufacturers provide such useful examples.
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Configurable analog chip computes with 1,000 times less power than digital

By Rick Robinson, Georgia Tech

Researchers at Georgia Tech have built and demonstrated a novel configurable computing device that uses a thousand times less electrical power -- and can be built up to a hundred times smaller -- than comparable digital floating-gate configurable devices currently in use.

Examples of FPAA chips and printed circuit boards. [Credit: Fitrah Hamid, Georgia Tech]

 

 

The new device, called the Field-Programmable Analog Array (FPAA) System-On-Chip (SoC), uses analog technology supported by digital components to achieve unprecedented power and size reductions. The researchers said that for many applications these low-power analog-based chips are likely to work as well as or better than configurable digital arrays.

Currently, field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) -- digital devices widely used in consumer devices, defense systems, and more -- dominate the configurable chip market. These floating-gate integrated circuits can be altered internally at any time, and techniques to reconfigure them for many different forms and functions are well established.

Professionals familiar with FPGAs will find the programming interface of the new analog chip surprisingly like the digital circuits in many ways, said Jennifer Hasler, a professor in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and leader of the research team that produced the new analog architecture.

"But in other ways, the FPAA is going to seem quite different," she said. "In terms of the power needed, it's extremely different because you need only milliwatts to run the analog device, while it's hard to get an FPGA to work on less than a watt."

A paper on the new FPAA system-on-chip device has been published on the IEEE Xplore website. Another paper focusing on the details of programming FPAA devices was also published on the Xplore site. In addition, a third paper, detailing a high-level open-source programming toolset developed by Hasler and her team for programming analog arrays, has also been published online in the Journal of Low Power Electronics and Applications.

Novel techniques
Traditionally, analog technology has been used primarily for hard-wired circuits such as sensors that interface between digital devices and the real world; examples include the circuits that detect and reproduce sound in cell phones and other devices. Analog circuits are also used extensively in electronics to regulate and optimize power use. These single-function circuits cannot perform software-based computation, using hardware gates and switches, in the manner of digital integrated circuits.

Hasler's team, however, has developed techniques that perform computation using an analog-style physical architecture by reliably positioning electrons in an FPAA's connective structure. This approach stands in contrast to FPGAs, which process electrons through floating gates in ways similar to conventional digital semiconductors such as memory chips or central processing units.

One advantage of FPAAs is that they're non-volatile, Hasler explained, meaning they retain data even when power is turned off. This is similar to flash memory technology, such as the solid-state drives and storage cards commonplace today. The use of non-volatile memory reduces power consumption, in contrast to the higher power needs of the volatile SRAM configurations typically used in FPGAs.

"In addition to being non-volatile, our analog architecture lets us do something fairly radical -- we can compute using the routing fabric of the chip, exploiting areas that are usually considered just dead weight," Hasler said. "To help do this, we've developed highly efficient switches that can be programmed on, off, or in-between -- partially on and partially off. This flexibility provides both increased computation capabilities and reduced power consumption."

Milliwatts or microwatts
The present FPAA device can operate on less than 30 mW -- thousandths of a watt, Hasler explained. That level approaches three orders of magnitude less than a conventional digital configurable chip. Further design advances in analog arrays could bring their power needs down into the microwatt range -- millionths of a watt.

To program the analog environment of the new device, researchers manipulate electrons in precise ways. Using electron-injection and electron-tunneling techniques, they erase data by lowering the number of electrons at specific locations in the device structure to the lowest possible value. Then they encode new data by increasing the number of electrons located at a given location up to an exact value.

This complex approach makes possible a highly dense chip structure that offers many parameters -- meaning programmable variables that can exist in a large number of different states and offer many shadings of behavior. It is this structural density that allows greater computing capability for a given degree of physical size and power input.

"Our FPAA chip has roughly half a million of these programmable parameters," Hasler said. "They can be used as a switch in a digital manner -- using the lowest possible value for ‘off' or the highest possible value for ‘on' -- or we can achieve even more rich behavior using intermediate values."

A new toolset
The FPAA device includes a small amount of built-in digital circuitry that supports communication within the chip and also helps run the programming infrastructure. Utilizing these support features, the team has developed an extensive set of high-level programming tools to take advantage of the new chip.

Among other things, the new toolset is designed to make working with analog arrays accessible to those familiar with digital designs like FPGAs, which are programmed using comparable high-level tools. The new toolset can both simulate and program the FPAA reconfigurable device. A paper detailing these high-level tools has been published online.

"Our toolset uses high-level software developed in the Scilab/Xcos open-source programs, with an analog and mixed-signal library of components," Hasler said. "Georgia Tech undergraduates are already using these tools in classes in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering that cover mixed-signal and analog devices and tools."

One area in which the analog approach is notably powerful involves command words -- voice recognition technology used in devices like smartphones to do such things as wake up circuits from an off state, Hasler said. Like traditional analog sensing circuits, an FPAA offers excellent context-aware capability at extremely low power states.

Hasler said that she has talked with several companies about potential applications of the FPAA in commercial devices. A significant number of FPAA chips has already been produced, but plans for potential large-scale manufacture of the chips have not been finalized. The key technologies in the FPAA system-on-chip are patent pending.

"We believe that analog technology offers very powerful ways to look at physical computing, with considerable potential for commercial, neuromorphic, military, and other applications," Hasler said.

CITATIONS:
Sihwan Kim, et al., "Integrated Floating-Gate Programming Environment for System-Level ICs," (IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems, 2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TVLSI.2015.2504118

Suma George, et at., "A Programmable and Configurable Mixed-Mode FPAA SoC," (IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems, 2016). http://www.dx.doi.org/10.1109/TVLSI.2015.2504119

Michelle Collins, et al., "An Open-Source Tool Set Enabling Analog-Digital-Software Co-Design," (Journal of Low-Power Electronics and Applications, 2016). http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/jlpea6010003

Published April 2016

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