Technology developed at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University could give pediatric cardiac surgeons a digital look at a child's heart. That way, the surgeon could map out a customized surgical plan before picking up a scalpel.

Researchers at Georgia Tech and Emory University are working on software that would use magnetic resonance imaging data to give pediatric cardiac surgeons a way to digitally study a patient's heart in order to plan the best surgery.

With a better understanding of a child's unique heart defect, surgeons could improve the recovery time and quality of life for children with complex conditions that may need multiple surgeries spread over the years, said Ajit Yoganathan, co-principal investigator on the project and a professor of biomedical engineering at both Georgia Tech and Emory University in Atlanta.

The technology, known as image-based surgical planning, creates a three-dimensional model of the child's heart using data from a series of MRIs taken at different times in the child's cardiac cycle. The series is called a four-dimensional MRI.

"We use the MRI images and time data to create models of these children's vascular systems and hearts to simulate how they currently work, and how they could work after surgery," Yoganathan said.

The models allow surgeons to visualize the direction of blood flow and determine any energy loss in the heart. So if a surgeon were planning a certain correction to an area of a child's heart, the model would show the surgeon how well blood would flow through the newly configured heart after surgery, Yoganathan said.

The researchers' eventual goal is to include a postoperative evaluation of the heart's performance by using
sophisticated blood flow computer simulation.

While the program isn't yet ready for use by surgeons outside the project, it could be available in about three to five years, Yoganathan said.

Today's product lifecycle management systems can share engineering information around a company. But they can fall short when asked to share information among companies and across security clearances.

The Boeing Co. is leading work toward a system that could send information across channels that aren't available today.

The airline maker, headquartered in Chicago, has pulled together industry partners and plans to establish a software environment to share virtual information. Boeing officials say that such software will help government organizations collaborate better, according to Howard Chambers, vice president and general manager of Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems.

Principal partners currently include Computer Sciences Corp. and Electronic Data Systems Corp., both of El Segundo, Calif.; Hewlett-Packard of Palo Alto, Calif., and Sun Microsystems Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif.

The application the partners develop would enable users to share large amounts of information across all levels of security over diverse networks, Chambers said.

"Information-sharing environments are key to situational awareness and knowledge management," he said.

Too much sharing can be a bad thing, especially in the business of handling intellectual property—things like CAD files or even Excel spreadsheets. And yet that is what most engineering companies have to do when they outsource, either down the street or halfway around the globe.

According to a study published a few months ago by the Aberdeen Group, almost half the companies in a survey said that they had lost market share because their product-related intellectual property had been compromised. Specifically, 48 percent said so; 44 percent said they had lost sales.

The research consisted of an independent survey of about 150 manufacturing companies of various sizes conducted over the Internet, and by phone and e-mail, according to Jim Brown, an Aberdeen VP who wrote the final report. The largest group, about 17 percent, consisted of industrial equipment manufacturers. Also included were high-tech software, aerospace, and defense companies, and engineering firms. The full title is The Protecting Product Intellectual Property Benchmark Report: Safeguarding Design IP in a Global Market.

When they learned the results of the survey, several companies stepped up to sponsor distribution of the information because they were in lines of business that addressed the security of intellectual property.

One of those interested parties is Pinion Software. The company's CEO, Darryl Worsham, and its marketing director, Mike Staley, stopped by the office to pass along some of the highlights of the Aberdeen survey to the editors here. Pinion says it sells software for Technical Rights Management—that is, to protect technical information in files that have to be shared outside or within a company.

The software permits a company to control what it shares by protecting files made by a variety of technical and business applications, including Autodesk, SolidWorks, and Pro/Engineer.

A file given protection by Pinion's technology remains in its native format. It can be opened, however, only by a chosen recipient—or a group of recipients, if that is desirable. That's because the reader software, which Pinion calls Receiver, has an identity number, and a file sender can choose which receivers can open the file.

Protection prohibits cutting and pasting, blocks screen grabbers, and can limit viewing time. A shred feature will delete a file at a certain date.

Receiver costs nothing to download. Prices for packagers range from $299 for the single-user Pinion Desktop Packager to $7,495 for a five-user license for the Pinion Desktop Packager-Pro/Engineer Edition.

Most ships slice through the waves rather than actually roll with them. But one company says that its vessel changes all that.

Founded by the husband-and-wife team of Ugo and Isabella Conti, Marine Advanced Research near San Francisco develops technologies that redefine the ways vessels travel the waters.

The Wave Adaptive Modular Vessel, or WAM-V, recently debuted near the San Francisco Bay. The vessel, designed by Marine Advanced Research, is wave adaptive. Its hull conforms to the surface of the water rather than cutting through the water.

For instance, the company recently developed its Wave Adaptive Modular Vessel, or WAM-V. The vessel is wave adaptive, meaning that its hull conforms to the surface of the water, rather than pushing, slapping, or piercing the waves the way most ships do as they move forward, Ugo Conti said.

"In many ways, a WAM-V is designed and built more like an automobile than a traditional vessel, because it has hinges, springs, and various other components that move in relation to each other," Conti said. He's president and chief executive officer of the company.

The technology can enhance performance for a variety of watercraft, including those used in search and rescue and in research, he added.

Marine Advanced Research engineers used Inventor CAD software from Autodesk of San Rafael, Calif., to take the vessel from design to prototype.

After several rounds of digital design using the software, the company produced a 100-foot WAM-V working prototype to demonstrate the technology. The vessel has already made a test cruise along the Pacific Coast and made her preview in the San Francisco Bay area in January, Conti said.

Cockpit designers have to take electromagnetic compatibility, or EMC, into account—the correct operation, in the same environment, of different electromagnetic equipment, according to Julien Blanc, an EMC specialist.

Engineers also must make sure emissions from the display don't interfere with radio communications or with radar-based collision detection systems.

The Thales engineers charged with testing cockpit and display systems for electromagnetic compatibility now use EMC simulation software to reduce testing costs. They previously had to build prototypes in order to run any tests.

Blanc works at the Thales Technical Unit Control and Display System Group of Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, which makes a range of cockpit and display systems for military and commercial aircraft. To reduce testing costs on newly designed cockpit instruments, Blanc's group now simulates electromagnetic compatibility.

In the past, his group addressed concerns by building prototypes and testing them for EMC compliance. If the prototype wasn't compliant, it had to be modified or rebuilt from scratch and the testing process repeated, Blanc said.

With the simulation software in place, Thales engineers evaluate their products' radiated emissions and susceptibility during early design stages, Blanc said. The company uses FLO/EMC electromagnetic simulation software from Flomerics of Marlborough, Mass.

It's important to design what you love.

James Engineering of Broomfield, Colo., primarily makes the deburring machines that smooth edges on metal parts, and it designs automotive systems and specialized racing karts on the side, according to Jim Richards, who founded the company and is its principal engineer.

The company's racing kart design is quite a departure from the mainstream of these specialized vehicles, which have motors, transmissions, and solid rear axles, but no suspension systems. The kart's chassis must be flexible enough to work as a suspension and stiff enough not to break or give way on a turn. The chassis on Richards' racing kart, scheduled for sale this year, uses a new bearing and joint design to keep the kart stable on curves, he said.

Richards used motion analysis software to anticipate structural problems and mechanical collisions in the kart systems designs before his company built prototypes. The software helped him develop geometry that kept the front end planted firmly on the ground, he said.

"We got into kart design late in the game. The field is 30 years old and our competitors have a lot of accrued knowledge," Richards said. "Design and analysis gave us the ability to step up and leap over their practical experience by modeling many different kinds of chassis to see how they would perform under varying conditions."

He used CosmosWorks for design analysis and CosmosMotion for motion analysis, both from SolidWorks of Concord, Mass.

Love robots so much you wish you could have majored in them? Now, you can.

Worcester Polytechnic Institute of Worcester, Mass., will offer a bachelor's degree program in robotics engineering in the fall. The school's officials believe it is the first in the nation.

The new major stems from an increasing demand for robots and robotics systems in areas like defense and security, elder care, customized manufacturing, and interactive entertainment. It's also a response to young people's growing interest in robots, said Carol Simpson, the school's provost and senior vice president.

"Robotics is one the fastest growing areas of technology and has the potential to change many aspects of our world and greatly improve human life," Simpson said. "This major is designed to prepare a new breed of engineer with the skills and imagination to develop machines that go far beyond today's reality."

No single discipline can provide necessary breadth for the new major, she added, so the school's computer science, electrical and computer engineering, and mechanical engineering departments will offer the major jointly. Students will study the fundamentals of these three fields and learn to apply them to design and build robots and robotic systems for a variety of applications, Simpson said.

Small explorer robots now being worked on at Sheffield Hallam University in Sheffield, England, could be the first to enter burning buildings in order to assess structural soundness and dangerous airborne chemicals, and to locate small industrial fires. They'd go in before firefighters to check for dangerous situations to keep first responders from peril and save time in an emergency.

"In fire and rescue, there are many hidden dangers, such as when thick smoke is masking the rescuers' entrance or escape route, which can severely impair their senses," said Jacques Penders, a senior research fellow at Sheffield Hallam.

Rescue workers who stumble upon any of those dangerous situations are, of course, at risk. And they need to retreat, which slows down rescue. The robots could take much of the risk and, by being the first to get the lay of the land, speed rescue efforts, Penders said. He's working on two types of mini robots, each around six inches in diameter, which he has dubbed Guardian and Viewfinder.

Guardian works in a team of 30 robots that communicate with each other and with firefighters over a connection similar to that of a mobile phone network. They can distance themselves as beacons, depending on the signal strength, to ensure constant contact, Penders said. The robots use on-board software to detect fires, obstacles, and dangerous situations, which they report to firefighters.

Viewfinder uses chemical sensors and video cameras to map safe locations for the crew in partly destroyed industrial sites after events like explosions. They work in a team of three and also communicate information to a central point.

MSC.Software Corp. of Santa Ana, Calif., has released SimOffice for engineers who design, analyze, and test mechanical parts used in end products.

Ledas Ltd. of Novosibirsk, Russia, which provides computational components for product lifecycle management and enterprise resource planning systems, has released an upgrade to its 3-D geometric solver, LGS 3D.

A maker of optical design software, Lambda Research Corp. of Littleton, Mass., has released TracePro 4.0 for optical modeling, design, and analysis.

A free download from Adobe Systems Inc. of San Jose, Calif., enables users to convert 3-D CAD models into portable document files regardless of whether or not they run CAD software.

AccuMetria of Eugene, Ore., has released CMMWorks version 3.0, an off-line coordinate measuring machine programming and simulation software package integrated with SolidWorks 2007.

Icona Solutions Ltd. of Manchester, England, has released its aesthetica/Catia version 5 Interface Module. It transfers product model data from the CAD software into the developer's aesthetica, a product that visualizes the impact of manufacturing variation on the aesthetic quality of product assemblies.

Radan 07 is the upgrade to Radan Computational's CAD and computer-aided manufacturing software for sheet metal applications. The developer is located in Bath, England.

home | features | breaking news | marketplace | departments | about ME back issues | ASME | site search

© 2007 by The American Society of Mechanical Engineers