Building Safety Into Robots, Cars, Planes And Medical Equipment

Daily Science Journal (Feb. 2, 2008) — A revolutionary new technology developed by engineers at the University of Leicester after over 12 years research promises to make safety a sure thing in equipment as diverse as cars, aircraft and medical equipment.

TE Systems: Left to right: Devaraj Ayavoo, John Gordon, Anjali Das at the driving simulator and Michael Pont. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Leicester)

The new patented technology invented by the researchers has led to the development of a new product family called "RapidiTTy". A company -- TTE Systems Ltd - has been spun out from the University of Leicester to develop and market this product.

TTE Systems Ltd aims to transform the way engineers develop systems which contain "embedded processors". Aircraft, cars, medical equipment and industrial robots are all examples of modern systems which contain such processors. Many of these embedded systems are safety related.

The company believes its new technology can make all the difference between life and death in some scenarios.

Dr. Devaraj Ayavoo, Technical Manager, TTE Systems Ltd, said: "If you are surfing the Web and it takes a few seconds longer than normal to access a particular page, this won't usually matter at all. However, if you put your foot on the brakes in your car, you can't afford to wait -- you need to be sure that the brakes will work immediately. At TTE Systems, our job is to ensure that complex embedded systems always work correctly."

Dr. Michael Pont, CEO of TTE Systems Ltd and Head of the Embedded Systems Laboratory at the University of Leicester, added: "Clearly there are many systems currently in use that are perfectly safe.

"However what is not easy at present is making systems safe and proving that they are safe. Our technology makes it easier to develop systems with predictable behaviour - a key requirement for safe systems.

"In an industry that is geared at developing new systems very quickly, the development of predicable systems has often been ignored and it is in this area that we have specialised.

"Our work involves what are known as "time triggered" -- or TT - designs. The goal with this technology can be stated very simply: In a TT design, we know in advance exactly what the embedded system will be doing at every moment of time during its execution.

"This is a highly innovative approach to system development.

"Our techniques can be applied in a very wide range of systems - even where safety is not a key requirement. For example, in many consumer appliances -- like washing machines, dishwashers, even DVD players -- customers would welcome improved reliability."

TTE Systems Ltd, created with support from the Lachesis Fund (the University Challenge Fund for the East Midlands), has launched the first products in the RapidiTTy family. The RapidiTTy family provides a complete, cost-effective, suite of software tools which support the rapid development and testing of a wide range of reliable embedded systems. The RapidiTTy tools build on a solid technical foundation ("time-triggered architectures"). These were developed in the Embedded Systems Laboratory at the University of Leicester over a period of more than 12 years. Staff in the Laboratory have an international reputation for their work in this area. To date, seven patent applications have been filed in connection with this new technology.

Dr Pont said there was real potential for the systems developed at Leicester to make an international impact: "Our tools make it very easy to incorporate our technology in "standard" development processes.

"Using time-triggered technology allows us to create low-cost tools which facilitate the rapid development of reliable embedded systems. Our goal is to make reliability a cornerstone of mainstream development tools."

Dr. Ayavoo added: "The design of embedded systems is often an extremely complicated process. Our users have been amazed how easy RapidiTTy is to use."

The ESDL is a newly-created lab which is funded by EMDA and hosted by the University of Leicester in New Walk, Leicester.

Adapted from materials provided by University of Leicester.

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Cell Phone Sensors Detect Radiation To Thwart Nuclear Terrorism

Daily Science Journal (Jan. 29, 2008) — Researchers at Purdue University are working with the state of Indiana to develop a system that would use a network of cell phones to detect and track radiation to help prevent terrorist attacks with radiological "dirty bombs" and nuclear weapons.

Purdue physics professor Ephraim Fischbach, at right, and nuclear engineer Jere Jenkins review radiation-tracking data as part of research to develop a system that would use a network of cell phones to detect and track radiation. Such a system could help prevent terrorist attacks with radiological "dirty bombs" and nuclear weapons by blanketing the nation with millions of cell phones equipped with radiation sensors able to detect even light residues of radioactive material. Because cell phones already contain global positioning locators, the network of phones would serve as a tracking system. (Credit: Purdue News Service photo/David Umberger)

Such a system could blanket the nation with millions of cell phones equipped with radiation sensors able to detect even light residues of radioactive material. Because cell phones already contain global positioning locators, the network of phones would serve as a tracking system, said physics professor Ephraim Fischbach. Fischbach is working with Jere Jenkins, director of Purdue's radiation laboratories within the School of Nuclear Engineering.

"It's the ubiquitous nature of cell phones and other portable electronic devices that give this system its power," Fischbach said. "It's meant to be small, cheap and eventually built into laptops, personal digital assistants and cell phones."

The system was developed by Andrew Longman, a consulting instrumentation scientist. Longman developed the software for the system and then worked with Purdue researchers to integrate the software with radiation detectors and cell phones. Cellular data air time was provided by AT&T.

The research has been funded by the Indiana Department of Transportation through the Joint Transportation Research Program and School of Civil Engineering at Purdue.

"The likely targets of a potential terrorist attack would be big cities with concentrated populations, and a system like this would make it very difficult for someone to go undetected with a radiological dirty bomb in such an area," said Longman, who also is Purdue alumnus. "The more people are walking around with cell phones and PDAs, the easier it would be to detect and catch the perpetrator. We are asking the public to push for this."

Tiny solid-state radiation sensors are commercially available. The detection system would require additional circuitry and would not add significant bulk to portable electronic products, Fischbach said.

The technology is unlike any other system, particularly because the software can work with a variety of sensor types, he said.

"Cell phones today also function as Internet computers that can report their locations and data to their towers in real time," Fischbach said. "So this system would use the same process to send an extra signal to a home station. The software can uncover information from this data and evaluate the levels of radiation."

The researchers tested the system in November, demonstrating that it is capable of detecting a weak radiation source 15 feet from the sensors.

"We set up a test source on campus, and people randomly walked around carrying these detectors," Jenkins said. "The test was extremely safe because we used a very weak, sealed radiation source, and we went through all of the necessary approval processes required for radiological safety. This was a source much weaker than you would see with a radiological dirty bomb."

Officials from the Indiana Department of Transportation participated in the test.

"The threat from a radiological dirty bomb is significant, especially in metropolitan areas that have dense populations," said Barry Partridge, director of INDOT's Division of Research and Development.

Long before the sensors would detect significant radiation, the system would send data to a receiving center.

"The sensors don't really perform the detection task individually," Fischbach said. "The collective action of the sensors, combined with the software analysis, detects the source. The system would transmit signals to a data center, and the data center would transmit information to authorities without alerting the person carrying the phone. Say a car is transporting radioactive material for a bomb, and that car is driving down Meridian Street in Indianapolis or Fifth Avenue in New York. As the car passes people, their cell phones individually would send signals to a command center, allowing authorities to track the source."

The signal grows weaker with increasing distance from the source, and the software is able to use the data from many cell phones to pinpoint the location of the radiation source.

"So the system would know that you were getting closer or farther from something hot," Jenkins said. "If I had handled radioactive material and you were sitting near me at a restaurant, this system would be sensitive enough to detect the residue. "

The Purdue Research Foundation owns patents associated with the technology licensed through the Office of Technology Commercialization.

In addition to detecting radiological dirty bombs designed to scatter hazardous radioactive materials over an area, the system also could be used to detect nuclear weapons, which create a nuclear chain reaction that causes a powerful explosion. The system also could be used to detect spills of radioactive materials.

"It's impossible to completely shield a weapon's radioactive material without making the device too heavy to transport," Jenkins said.

The system could be trained to ignore known radiation sources, such as hospitals, and radiation from certain common items, such as bananas, which contain a radioactive isotope of potassium.

"The radiological dirty bomb or a suitcase nuclear weapon is going to give off higher levels of radiation than those background sources," Fischbach said. "The system would be sensitive enough to detect these tiny levels of radiation, but it would be smart enough to discern which sources posed potential threats and which are harmless."

The team is working with Karen White, senior technology manager at the Purdue Research Foundation, to commercialize the system. For more information on licensing the cell phone sensor technology, contact White at (765) 494-2609

Adapted from materials provided by Purdue University.

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Biometrics: Unlocking Doors With Your Eyes

Daily Science Journal (Dec. 14, 2007) — It is not science fiction to think that our eyes could very soon be the key to unlocking our homes, accessing our bank accounts and logging on to our computers, according to Queensland University of Technology researcher Sammy Phang.

QUT researcher Sammy Phang. (Credit: Image courtesy of Queensland University of Technology)

Research by Ms Phang, from QUT's Faculty of Built Environment and Engineering, is helping to remove one of the final obstacles to the everyday application of iris scanning technology.

Ms Phang said the pattern of an iris was like a fingerprint in that every iris was unique. "Every individual iris is unique and even the iris pattern of the left eye is different from the right. The iris pattern is fixed throughout a person's lifetime" she said.

"By using iris recognition it is possible to confirm the identity of a person based on who the person is rather than what the person possesses, such as an ID card or password.

"It is already being used around the world and it is possible that within the next 10 to 20 years it will be part of our everyday lives."

Ms Phang said although iris recognition systems were being used in a number of civilian applications, the system was not perfect. "Changes in lighting conditions change a person's pupil size and distort the iris pattern," she said.

"If the pupil size is very different, the distortion of the iris pattern can be significant, and makes it hard for the iris recognition system to work properly."

To overcome this flaw, Ms Phang has developed the technology to estimate the effect of the change in the iris pattern as a result of changes in surrounding lighting conditions. "It is possible for a pupil to change in size from 0.8mm to 8mm, depending on lighting conditions," she said.

Ms Phang said by using a high-speed camera which could capture up to 1200 images per second it was possible to track the iris surface's movements to study how the iris pattern changed depending on the variation of pupil sizes caused by the light. "The study showed that everyone's iris surface movement is different."

She said results of tests conducted using iris images showed it was possible to estimate the change on the surface of the iris and account for the way the iris features changed due to different lighting conditions.

"Preliminary image similarity comparisons between the actual iris image and the estimated iris image based on this study suggest that this can possibly improve iris verification performance."

Adapted from materials provided by Queensland University of Technology.

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