' OUT-OF-THE-BOX' AUTO GEAR BOX -- HATS OFF TO MARUTI-SUZUKI

This is NOT a plug for a commercial product. But I couldn't help singing the praises of Maruti-Suzuki enigneers for their innovative solution to an old problem -- the automatic transmission. With their EZ Drive, they have designed a truly "out-of-the-box" solution to the tricky problem.

Playing a two finger symphony on just three keys is probably one of the best ways of describing the "tricks" of driving a car. Mastering the fine art of managing the clutch, brake and accelerator, and shifting smoothly into the correct gear, is what separates the really good drivers from the "kerr ... plunk ... kini..kini..." artists on our roads.

Believing the text books that the clutch was a mechanism to smoothen the transfer of power from the engine to the wheels to get the car moving and the gears were only intended to help you get up to speed, was your first folly, you will ultimately discover. With a road filled with 'enemies' who were intent on annihilating you, and with a not-so-friendly 'guru' by your side shouting himself hoarse (poor chap runs a high blood pressure perennially, thanks to his suicidal disciples!), you discover that two feet are not enough to manage all the three pedals. You end up cursing the inventor and, of course, yourself for the crowning folly of deciding to learn to drive! And today in our grid-locked cities where you spend more time pumping the clutch and shifting gears than driving, this could soon make you join the queue at the RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury) clinic. It is in moments as these that universally one's thoughts turn to an automatic transmission that will take care of the 'nitty-gritty' and let you enjoy driving. Yes, thoughts of automating the whole "tap-dance" of driving is probably as old as cars.

Generally automatic transmissions, introduced in the 1940s and refined over the years, are of two types. The popular version for cars and heavy vehicles rely on a hydraulic torque convertor, which is a complex and expensive piece of machinery. The second is the Continuously Variable Transmission, again a complex mechanical contraption, which is more suited to lighter vehicles like two wheelers. Of course, developments in recent decades have improved the performance of both types, particularly with the marriage of improved mechanics with 'intelligent' microproocessor-based controllers.

But for the driver, the fact remains that the automatic transmission-equipped cars are priced much higher than their cousins with manual gear boxes, and also that their mileage is an order lower than the manuals. The automatics are fine for cruising along the highway, but in the stop-and-go traffic of our congested cities, the price paid for ease of driving is a far lower mileage.

This has been the case, till the Maruti-Suzuki engineers came up with a brilliant solution. As we all know, the company made its name with small, petrol-sipping city cars priced aggressively. So fitting in an expensive auto transmission was out of the question. This is where the "out-of-the-box" thinking of the design engineers deserves kudos for coming up with a simple solution. When you look at it, what does the driver do? S/he judges the road/load conditions and selects the proper gear, applies the clutch and accelerator as needed (and, of course, the brakes, but which do not come into the 'auto' equation!), and off you go! So the engineers probably thought, why not put a "hydraulic hand" on top of the manual gear box and another one (a 'hydraulic foot'!) on the clutch, and then control the whole thing with a microprocessor running an intelligent program?

The auto-manual gear lever

Well, not a difficult task in these days of advanced "mechantronics", and so they did precisely that. Electro-hydraulic actuator assemblies and an 'intelligent' controller takes care of the 'gear-shifting' part. The driver is only tasked with managing the accelerator and the brakes. The engineers have 'tweaked' the system so well that it shifts gears as well as (if not better!) a good driver, and that too quickly and smoothly. The result? A good automatic transmission that does not need a basic redesign of the vehicle -- it is something like a 'bolt-on' unit and so production is not complicated. The same model could be offered in both automatic and non-auto variants, and in all probability, the "auto gear box add-on" could be fitted to most models sooner than later if the demand grows.

You start the car in neutral (N). With brake engaged, shift into drive (D) and the car goes into a slow speed "creep" mode, which is also said to be ideal for bumper-to-bumper city traffic. A press of the "fly-by-wire" accelerator (no conventional cable link here) sends the signal to the "brain" for a peppy take-off. Also, if you fancy it, you may shift into manual (M) and use the + and - "nudges" to shift up or down as need be. Pretty neat! Readers may recall that sometime back BMW (and other makes too) had introduced such "paddle gear shifts". One BMW model, I recall, even had a small switch labelled Economy-Sport, which changed the "gear shifting behaviour" of the microprocessor from a sedate, economical manner to a more aggressive sporty style!

The "icing on the cake" is that the auto version offers virtually the same mileage as the manual gear box car, and the pricing is only marginally higher than a manual model. I guess one more "hidden advantage" for the "average non-expert driver" is less wear and tear on the clutch and the gear box, not to say anything about the wear on the nerves of the driver and the passengers in the bumper-to-bumper city traffic! I am told that the engineers are so confident of the reliability of the unit that the company is thinking of offering a warranty of ten years on the sealed electro-hydraulic actuator system and the controller.

Let us hope that Maruti's novel EZ Drive system is capable of meeting all the requirements of performance and ease of use.
A bonus for us would be the 'ease' it would confer on our pockets, our limbs and our nerves!
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PS: It has subsequently been learned that the "automated manual transmission" technology has been sourced from Magneti Marelli, an Italian company that specializes in developing high-tech systems for the auto industry. Still the original thinking behind the simpler approach to the issue is laudable.

Read more about transmissions at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_transmission
http://jalopnik.com/this-is-how-an-automatic-transmission-works-517581894
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuously_variable_transmission

YOUR TRUE ID LIES JUST SKIN DEEP

Fingerprints have traditionally been the one sure-fire ID to prove that you were you. Till the crooks got better than the good guys with stick-on rubber fingertip covers to spoof someone else's prints. The current biometric ID rage is iris scans, which use mathematical pattern recognition techniques on images of the irises of an individual's eyes, whose complex random patterns are unique to the individual. But now it is common knowledge that contact lenses can be fabricated to cheat security scanners and let an imposter through.

Enter the latest wrinkle in biometric authentication -- thermal imaging of the veins of your face. Facial recognition is widely accepted by security systems, and now this technique takes the scanning to the subcutaneous level to identify that you are you, and not some pretender wearing a skin-thin mask.

Researchers at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Jadavpur University, (Kolkata, West Bengal) led by Prof Debotosh Bhattachrjee have now come up with a biometric authentication protocol that relies on the unique nature of the complex web of veins just below the facial skin -- Thermal Face Recognition System (TFRS). Here the thermal infra-red 'maps' of the facial veins are analyzed and compared by computer algorithms in order to authenticate the individual. The technique is 'non-invasive' in that it needs no physical contact unlike in the case of a fingerprint ID system. (Even iris scans need "a close look"at your eyes.) The thermal scans are superior as they are immune to changes that might be brought on by aging, facial hair growth, glasses or cosmetics, and, yes, disguises/masks. Studies have revealed that even identical twins have differing thermal facial patterns. It is claimed that the system has accuracy levels exceeding 97 per cent.

The path-breaking development is sure to take biometric authentication to higher levels ... oops! one level lower!! Who said your face identifes you; it is what lies beneath the skin that counts really!

Learn more at:
http://www.biometricupdate.com/201307/thermal-imaging-of-face-vein-patterns-enters-the-biometric-discussion/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3424639/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biometrics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_recognition

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DVD Drive + Ingenuity = Scanning Microscope

It is not everyday that brilliant lateral thinking can work magic and convert everyday objects into exotic instruments. Now such news comes out of the research labs of the School of Biotechnology at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. And the icing on the cake is the cheap diagnostics it will augur in for HIV patients.

Early diagnosis of HIV infection is a key factor in successful treatment, and this depends on a reliable blood test. An established test for HIV is to measure the population of CD4+ T-helper cells - white blood cells with a key role in the body's immune system. Currently Flow Cytometry has been the method of choice for monitoring the number of these cells in a blood sample. But it is an expensive (upwards of $ 30,000) and relatively complex test, requiring lab facilities and trained personnel.

Now Dr Aman Russom, senior lecturer at the School of Biotechnology at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, has taken the ubiquitous (and cheap!) DVD drive for computers and, with just a few 'tweaks', converted it into a scanning laser microscope! The breakthrough 'Lab-on-DVD' technology has created the possibility of an inexpensive and simple-to-use tool that could have far-reaching benefits in health care in the developing world. "With an ordinary DVD player, we have created a cheap (less than $ 200) analytical tool for visualizing DNA, RNA, proteins and even entire cells," said Dr Russom.

The CD and DVD drives, devices of choice for high volume data storage in computers, have built-in high-precision laser optics and servo mechanisms. Dr Russom has now integrated the cheap optics of DVD drives with centrifugal microfluidics to come up with an accurate analytical platform.

The  blood sample is placed on a disposable polymer disk that fits into a standard DVD drive. Each disk is built from two half-disk substrates--the bottom portion with all the operational information required to allow the disc to be read by a standard DVD drive, while the top half-disk contains fluidic microchannels pre-treated to promote attachment of the cells of interest to the channel walls. The standard photodetector is complemented by another one on the opposite side of the disk. This allows a 2D image of particulates on the surface of the DVD channels to be built up by tracking changes in the absorbency and light-scattering observed. The proof-of-concept system demonstrated the specific detection of CD4+ cells direct from whole blood, with single-cell resolution images.

The KTH system is capable of imaging down to one micron, a figure dependent on the drive's optical specifications and the detection layer of the DVD disc, in which the linear distance between each spiral of the tracking path is 0.74 microns. The use of Blu-ray drives could enhance the resolution further, thanks to the shorter wavelength of the blue laser.

"The low cost of the technology and portability makes it suitable as a diagnostic and analytical tool in clinical practice close to the patient," Russom says. "And because it delivers extremely fast analysis, the patient ... can get [results] right on the first visit to a doctor."

The development is sure to warm the hearts of the original designers of the CD/DVD drive, seeing their 'baby' take a 'side-step'  to be transformed into a scanning laser microscope!

Explore more at:
http://www.kth.se/en/aktuellt/nyheter/dvd-lasaren-gor-comeback-som-hiv-testare-1.380911

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'Long shot' Laser 3-D Camera

A 'normal' camera takes flat pictures that have only two dimensions. As children many of us had come across 3D picture viewers that employed two pictures of the same object taken from slightly different angles to 'cheat' the eye into thinking that we are seeing a solid, three-dimensional object.

Now researchers have developed a new laser-driven camera system that creates high-resolution 3-D images of objects from up to a kilometre away. Mimicking radar, a laser beam is swept and bounced off the object, and the time for it to travel back to a detector is measured, from which the contours of the object are computed. The technique, called time-of-flight (ToF), is used in navigation systems for autonomous vehicles, but many current systems have a relatively short range and are virtually useless with objects that do not reflect laser light. The new system, however, has overcome these limitations.

The research team, led by Gerald Buller, professor at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, has perfected a ToF imaging system that can gather high-resolution, 3-D information of objects from up to a kilometre away. A low-power infrared laser beam is swept rapidly over an object and the round-trip flight time of the photons in the beam as they bounce off the object and arrive back at the source is recorded. The detector that can count individual photons can resolve depth on the millimetre scale over long distances. Also, the ability of the new system to image objects like items of clothing that do not easily reflect laser pulses makes it useful in a wider variety of field situations.

One of the key characteristics of the system is the long wavelength of laser light the researchers chose. The light has a wavelength of 1,560 nanometres, meaning it is longer, or "redder," than visible light. This long-wavelength light travels more easily through the atmosphere, is not drowned out by sunlight, and is safe for eyes at low power. Already the researchers are gunning for extending the range of the 3D 'scanning camera' to 10 kilometres.

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Jap Scientists in Dreamland

Dreams had always tantalized man from the ancient times to the Freudian and their interpretations had as many variations as there were practitioners. Psychology, we could easily see, inhabits that narrow borderline area between science and non-science. But whatever your take on dreams, be it Freudian or Jungian, or something more exotic, you just cannot hide your dreams from the Japanese scientists.

Scientists in Japan, using nothing more exotic than MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scanners commonly employed in diagnostics, have found a way to 'read' people's dreams, thus unlocking the secrets of the unconscious mind. According to researchers, this was "the world's first decoding" of night-time visions, the subject of centuries of speculation and study.

Scientists at the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories (in Kyoto, western Japan) used EEG (Electroencephalography) and fMRI (funtional MRI) scans to map patterns of brain activity during the first (non-REM) phase of sleep. Once dream patterns were seen, the volunteer 'dreamers' were woken up and asked about the visual images that they had dreamed about. This was repeated for about 200 times for each of the volunteers. A computer algorithm correlated the resulting data of the dreamer's perceptions with the corresponding MRI patterns, with the result that soon the scientists could, with a fair amount of accuracy (sometimes as high as 70% !) predict what images the volunteers were dreaming about by looking at the MRI patterns. Specific items like men, words, books, cars etc could easily be identified, said the scientists. "We have concluded that we successfully decoded some kinds of dreams with a distinctively high success rate," said Yukiyasu Kamitani, a senior researcher at the laboratories and head of the study team.

US neuroscientist and dream expert Dr Robert Stickgold, from Harvard Medical School in Boston, said "...we are still far from having a machine that can fully read our dreams." But, despite this, he described the study as ‘stunning in its detail and success’ and added that "This is probably the first real demonstration of the brain basis of dream content".

At present, the system is apparently limited to detecting only very basic classes of objects which the dreamers visualise, and it would take a few bulky lab instruments and a team of boffins to open the doors to your dreamland. However, we can expect a further refinement of the 'dream-reader' algorithm, as well as an extension of the same to map smells, emotions and entire stories. That would mean plumbing the depths of REM sleep. So be careful about what you choose to say about your dreams. Sooner or later an app could even be available for the smartphone that could easily 'read' your secret dreams accurately!

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Self-healing Microchips—the origin of a new species

Science is getting closer and closer to making 'intelligent' robots that are almost lifelike. Artificial intelligence programs have beaten the best of humans in that good old game of strategy, chess. But try as they might, the most sophisticated of them are unlikely to be classed as living things. The simple reason? Well, they lack the capacity for self repair. In fact the capacity for adaptive self repair has been something that has put living beings on the topmost rung of the ladder. Just one wee little bit of a circuit going awry could spell "curtains" for the best of robots. One wrong line of code could throw the spanner into the works of the best of AI programs. That, then is the "fact of life".

Now engineers at Caltech (California Institute of Technology) have sowed the seeds for the origin of a new species-- a microchip that could learn to heal itself. A self-healing chip is but a few steps short of a self-healing machine, the Holy Grail of robotics and AI. In a typical microchip, there are thousands of pathways by which information can travel, but a single fault can render the whole system inoperative. By a rough count, these days a typical chip may house upwards of 100,000 transistors, the basic building blocks of a chip. All of these transistors might not function simultaneously, though the failure of just one or two could turn the chip into a dud. The researchers wanted to broadly mimic the human brain, which, if one pathway for information flow becomes unavailable, quickly seeks out alternative pathways.

The chip with the "electronic immune system" has a range of on-chip sensors that monitor temperature, current, voltage, and power. The data from the array of sensors is fed into a custom-made Application-Specific Integrated-Circuit (ASIC) unit on the same chip, a central processor that acts as the "brain" of the system. In the event of a failure, the chip's brain draws conclusions based on the aggregate response from the sensors and switches actuators to "reconfigure" the chip's functionality on the fly. "We have designed the system in a general enough way that it finds the optimum state for all of the actuators in any situation without external intervention", says one of the designers.

Part of the chip that was 'laser-fried'
-damage from which the chip recovered

In order to demonstrate this self-healing functionality, the research team zapped a high frequency communications chip multiple times with a high power laser, 'frying' many devices on the chip. However, when next switched on, the chip's "brain" swung into action and restored the functionality in about a second, and that too to nearly ideal levels. "...(the ciruits) can now both diagnose and fix their own problems without any human intervention, moving one step closer to indestructible circuits...", was how the lead researcher put it. The team is confident that the self-healing approach can be extended to virtually any other electronic system.

The development, though in its infancy now, is sure to open up a world of possibilities. Making a cyborg like 'Terminator' may not happen overnight, but truly the mind boggles when once considers the future when inanimate systems could "take care of themselves".

Learn more at:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-self-healing-microchips

http://www.caltech.edu/content/creating-indestructible-self-healing-circuits

'Remote sensing' Electronic Tattoos

Tattoos are as old as mankind, though it was the exposure to the Polynesian practice that had re-ignited interest in tattooing in the West. Tattooing has been practised for centuries in many cultures around the world. The 'skin art' is mostly decorative in purpose. But now medical researchers at the University of Illinois have converted the tattoo into a diagnostic tool.

The electronic circuit 'printed' on skin

The project, pioneered by materials scientist John Rogers, is the latest development in research into flexible "epidermal electronics". This involves flexible circuit boards and electronics that can be printed directly on to the skin of a person, whose health parameters like heart rate and temperature, strain and hydration, could be monitored directly by the sensors and the accompanying circuits, and beamed back to the physician. Techniques have been developed to print circuits directly on to human skin with a rubber stamp. it is then covered with a spray-on bandage to form a protective coating. The ultra-thin mesh electronics operate like a standard computer circuit board – with electrodes, sensors and wireless communication systems.

This development could be the first step in a futuristic system of networked healthcare. With such a "tattoo system" in place, patients could be sent home to recuperate post-surgical procedures and doctors could monitor their progress remotely, with the "printed-tattoo" devices taking over the roles of electromyographs and electrocardiographs, the "big iron" of hospital rooms. The "tattoo" circuits will continue to do their job for a couple of weeks before the skin's natural exfoliation process will cause them to flake off.

That makes one wonder: Is it right to call them tattoos--which are more or less permanent?!

Explore more at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2013/mar/13/electronic-tattoo-monitor-patient-symptoms
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tattoo