Da Vinci Xi Surgical Robot !!!

Intuitive Surgical's da Vinci series of surgical robots have been conducting FDA-approved minimally invasive surgery on humans for well over a decade now, and the company is continuallt trying to make its robots better at performing operations with the absolute minimum of cuttingyouopeness.
Last week, Intuitive released a fancy new version of the da Vinci robot, the Xi, which it says has more capabilities than previous models and is optimized for complex procedures.

A quick reminder if you're not familiar with the da Vinci: It's not an automated surgical system. Rather, it's remote controlled by a human surgeon. The word "remote" might be a bit misleading, though: while the system is capable of being operated from just about anywhere, it's most common to have the surgeon sitting right next to it, in the operating room with the patient. The benefit of the da Vinci system isn't really the potential for remote access; instead, it's that the surgeon can use tiny robotic tools that mean a much smaller incision, along with visual enhancements like infrared imaging that provide valuable information than their eyes might not.

In case you didn't catch all that, here's the rundown on what's new and improved in the Xi:

A new overhead instrument arm architecture designed to facilitate anatomical access from virtually any position.
A new endoscope digital architecture that creates a simpler, more compact design with improved visual definition and clarity.
An ability to attach the endoscope to any arm, providing flexibility for visualizing the surgical site.
Smaller, thinner arms with newly designed joints that offer a greater range of motion than ever before.
Longer instrument shafts designed to give surgeons greater operative reach.

In addition, the da Vinci Xi System is built to be compatible with Intuitive Surgical's Firefly Fluorescence Imaging System. While it is not currently available, we plan to seek regulatory clearance for use of Firefly Imaging with the da Vinci Xi System. This technology is currently available as an option with the da Vinci Si model, and it is used to provide the surgeon with additional visual information in a variety of surgical procedures by enabling real-time visualization and assessment of vessels, bile ducts and tissue perfusion.

That last bit in there is a good example of one of the benefits of using a robot for surgery: you can add a bit of augmented reality into the mix to make the job of the surgeon significantly easier by providing information overlaid on the important bits of the patient directly, instead of having to glance back and forth at images while you try not to poke the wrong squishy thing.
Still, we should point out that the benefits of robotic assisted surgeries are still open to debate: they are minimally invasive, but the systems are expensive, making the surgeries more expensive, and the overall benefit to the patient is not always certain.

However, a UCLA study from February of this year did find that "prostate cancer patients who undergo robotic-assisted prostate surgery have fewer instances of cancer cells at the edge of their surgical specimen and less need for additional cancer treatments like hormone or radiation therapy than patients who have traditional 'open' surgery."
This is the sort of study that we need more of, especially as surgical robots get more advanced: the technology that da Vinci systems represent is very impressive, but it's important to know that it's definitely worth using before our healthcare system invests in it.

For more information check on the below website.
Intuitive Surgical

Wireless Charging For Electric Vehicles

Wireless charging is on the way hitting up on the road for electric vehicles. Vehicles with wireless charging has a revolutionary inductive charging technology. Batteries being charged wirelessly when the bus stops to pick up the passengers. With no need to plug in the charge, its a breakthrough that should speed up the widespread adoption of electric vehicles.

Since charging in a electric vehicle is laborious as owner has to find charging point, connect up their cable and leave the vehicle for hours. This replaced by wireless power transfer technology which was developed decades ago, but its low efficiency restricted to little industrial settings, providing power for robotic vehicles and cranes.

It relies on the principle of electromagnetic induction. A magnetic field generated by an alternating current in a primary coil induces a current in a nearby secondary coil. It allows an energy transfer efficiency of 90%or higher.

John Boyes and Grant Covic at the University of Auckland in New Zealand worked out the optimal design for the shape of the coils to minimize energy losses. They also figured out how power can be transferred when the coils are misaligned so it still functions even if you are terrible at parking. The magnetic field has to be controlled so it stays within a safe limit, otherwise metals carried by passengers, from coins to pacemakers can get heated.

Two firms – IPT Technology of Efringen-Kirchen in Germany and Qualcomm Halo of London – have licensed the Auckland patents and are developing their own variants.On 9 January, the UK city of Milton Keynes launched a full-scale electric bus service, plying a 24-kilometer route with eight buses running from the city center to Bletchley, charged using IPT's pads.

In a test of the technology's potential, Paul Drayson, a British racing driver and entrepreneur, last October set the world land-speed record for a lightweight electric vehicle in a racing car charged by one of Qualcomm Halo's wireless pads. The company's technology will also charge the safety cars in Formula-E – the electric version of Formula 1 which kicks off later this year.

A full Detailed Article by QUALCOMM HALO..
Click Here..

Ultra Capacitors- New Efficiency for Power Train !!!

Electric and hybrid vehicles have been under development for as long as anyone can
remember, but have so far failed to become widely adopted. There have been some
fundamental problems of energy storage and delivery that have yet to be successfully
and cost-effectively overcome. Many of these issues can be traced to the limitations of
batteries – heavy, large in size, with a limited charging rate and potentially high
maintenance.

System designs can take advantage of the power of ultra capacitors to conserve energy
by allowing the engine to stop while the vehicle is not moving and then to be restarted
nearly instantly on tip in of the throttle. The design also allows regenerative braking
energy to be captured thereby significantly increasing efficiency and reducing pollution.
The use of engine start/stop and regenerative braking has been estimated to produce
between 7 and 15% increased fuel efficiency while reducing pollution by an even greater
percentage.

Announced programs for integrating ultra capacitors into vehicle power trains include big
names such as BMW, VW, Honda, Nissan and Toyota, among st many others. These
vehicles run the gamut from concept to production-intent, and include systems for hybrid
trucks, buses, and passenger vehicles are underway.

Problems with hybrid vehicles 

 Batteries have difficulty functioning in cold weather. 

 Batteries require a sophisticated charge equalization management. 

 Batteries have limited cycle life under extreme conditions, which results in high 

cost replacement throughout the life of the vehicle. A new battery has to be 

purchased and installed; the old battery has to be removed and disposed. Battery 

disposal can be problematic unless the manufacturer has a recycling program. 

 Batteries are limited in their ability to capture and provide bursts of high power 

during short duration events such as acceleration and regenerative braking. This 

high power limitation reduces the efficiency of the hybrid electric drive system 

design. 

What is an ultra capacitor? 

Ultra capacitors are based on an electric double layer technology that has been 

understood for over a hundred years, but only available for commercial applications for 

about ten years. 

What are the advantages of ultra capacitors as compared to batteries? 

 They function well in cold weather, down to –40° Celsius, whereas without heating, 

batteries do not operate well below 0° degrees Celsius. 

 They are extremely safe because a pack with equalization is discharged over night. 

 They have a long life cycle, basically built to last the time of the machine into 

which they are incorporated. This means that they are maintenance-free which 

ultimately results in costs-savings. This is particularly important for applications 

where life-cycle cost is of high value, such as embedded power modules, hybrid 

buses and trucks. 

 They are more efficient than batteries; 84-95% as compared to an average of 

below 70% for batteries in this application. 

 They are very environmentally friendly as they are 70% recyclable and do not 

include any heavy metals which are detrimental to the environment. 

 Ultra capacitors offer up to ten times the power of batteries, which plays an 

important role in boosting the acceleration of a vehicle. 

Detailed Case Study of Maxwell Technologies.

Click Here..

Microcontroller Based Dynamic Display using LED..

Here we describe a microcontroller-based dynamic display system using LED strip that can be used for advertising message display. The display works by flashing characters sequentially and then the entire text together. Different lighting effects are possible, like flashing in zig-zag, increasing, decreasing and random patterns.Surface-mount device (SMD) LEDs are becoming popular because of their low power consumption and high brightness. These LEDs are readily available in the market in many colours both as single LEDs and LED strips.

LED strip
An LED strip is made up of a number of SMD LEDs affixed to a PCB surface. LED strips are mainly of two types—flexible and rigid. These come in different lengths and light outputs.

Circuit for microcontroller based dynamic display using LED strip

The type of LED strip can be selected as per the desired application:

Bare strip. This LED strip is ideal for indoor (inside or under cupboards and stairs) and indirect lighting applications.

Silicon-covered strip. This LED strip is suitable for use in humid places like bathrooms and for outdoor use (accent lighting in houses and buildings).

Silicon-sleeved LED strip. This strip is fully encapsulated by a silicon sleeve and is suitable for use in swimming pools, saunas and outdoors where direct contact with rain or water is unavoidable.

The LED strip has in-built series dropper resistors and works off +12V, 400mA DC supply. It can be cut or trimmed to a smaller size of about 5 cm in length, and pasted on any flat surface (LED strips come with a self-sticking gum). In this dynamic display, we have cut the LED strip to form the word ‘EFY’.

Circuit description

Fig. 1 shows the circuit for microcontroller-based dynamic display using LED strip while its power supply is shown in Fig. 2. It comprises microcontroller AT89C51 (IC1), octal peripheral driver array ULN2803 (IC2, IC3, IC4 and IC5), regulator IC 7805 (IC6) and a few discrete components.

Microcontroller AT89C51 is at the heart of the circuit. It is an 8-bit micro-controller with 4 kB of Flash programmable and eras-able read-only memory (PER-OM), 128 bytes of RAM, 32 input/output (I/O) lines, two 16-bit timers/counters, a five-vector two-level interrupt architecture, a full-duplex serial port, on-chip oscillator and clock circuitry.

power supply

Ports 1, 2 and 3 of the microcontroller are 8-bit bidirectional I/O ports with internal pull-ups but port 0 is an 8-bit open-drain bidirectional I/O port. Therefore port 0 is pulled up by resistor network RNW1. Port pins P0.0 through P0.7 of the microcontroller are connected to input pins 1 through 8 of IC2, respectively. Similarly, pins of ports 1, 2 and 3 are connected to input pins of IC3 through IC5, respectively, without pull-up resistors.

ULN2803 is a monolithic, high-voltage and high-current Darlington transistor array. It consists of eight npn Darlington pairs that have high-voltage outputs with common-cathode clamp diode for switching inductive loads. The collector-current rating of a single Darlington pair is 500 mA. ULN2803 has a 2.7-kilo-ohm base resistor for each Darlington pair to connect directly with the transistor-transistor logic (TTL) or complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) devices.

LED strips are connected to output pins 11 through 18 of the ULN2803 ICs. The microcontroller drives the LED strips through ULN2803 according to the source program.

Power-on reset for the microcontroller is provided by the combination of resistor R1 and capacitor C1. Switch S1 is used for manual reset. A 12MHz crystal along with two 33pF capacitors connected between pins 18 and 19 provides the basic clock frequency to microcontroller AT89C51.

Fig. 2 shows the circuit for power supply. The 230V AC mains is stepped down by transformer X1 to deliver a secondary output of 12V, 5A. The transformer output is rectified by full-wave bridge rectifier BR1, filtered by capacitor C4 and regulated by IC 7805. Capacitor C5 bypasses the ripples, if any, present in the regulated supply. LED1 acts as the power indicator and R2 limits the current through LED1. Regulated 5V DC supply is used for the microcontroller section. Unregulated supply (12V) is used for the LED strips and ULN2803 ICs.

Software

The source program (strip.c) for microcontroller-based dynamic display using LED strip is written in ‘C’ language. It is compiled using the Keil µVision4 compiler to generate the hex code. The generated hex code is burnt into the microcontroller using a suitable programmer.

The source program allows for lighting effects like flashing in zig-zag, increasing, decreasing and random patterns. Different delay combinations make the lighting effect more attractive. Function rand( ) is used to generate the random lighting effects.

Click for Source Code

Electric Garage adds Tesla High Power Charger for Public Use !!!

A high power wall connnector for Tesla Electric cars have been installed for public use at CMU's Electric garage in Oakland. Thisn is the largest charging infrastyructure of any instittution in Pennsylvania. The tesla charger is also available to public locally and available at no cost for 24 hrs on first come first served basis.

Tesla High Power Charger

This connector is termed as the most intelligent connector making it ideal for long term storage and can be installed by any certified electrician. It has charging rate of 58 miles per hour at Maximum Power. Using the mobile connector it provides a charging rate of 29 miles/hour.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION 

Maximum Current- 70A

Voltage- 208-240V, Single phase

Maximum Power- 16.8kW

Cord length- 25 ft

Unit Weight- 47lbs

Intelligent Auto Resettable GFCI Stationary unit

Tesla Model-S charging

It also has a Tesla App that allows you to check the state of charging remotely. Just pull up the apkp to see if you have recovered the range needed to get to your next destination .It can also be used to heat or cool the cabin to your preferred temperature. The Tesla Mobile app is available to download in Apple App Store and the Android App Store.

WATER STRIDERS... New Concept in Microbots...!!!

A microbot have been developed by Chinese researchers that can repeatedly jump over across the surface of water without tanking. They have a porous, highly repellent nickel foam coating so that the strider like bot legs are able to stay afloat with every 14cm leap it makes, despite its high weight of 1100 water striders

bio inspired waterstrider model

bio inspired microstrider

As reported by scientists these tiny robots can walk on water. They could skim across water bodies to monitor water quality or can be used as tiny spies.

But practically, even the most advanced designs can only walk on water. It is difficult to make robot jump because of the downward force needed it to propel it into the air usually pushes the legs through the water surface. To overcome this nickel  foam coating is used to build a true water string robot.

On/Off Control of Fan by Light !!!

Wanna turn On and Off a fan by just directing torchlight or other light using Light Dependent Resistor(LDR).
Check on the circuit below for a 5V power supply.

Preset VR1 and a light-dependent resistor (LDR) work as the potential divider. Normally, the LDR’s resistance is high (20 kilo-ohms) in darkness and low (2 kilo-ohms) in light. This value of high and low resistances varies for other LDRs. Preset VR1 is used for setting the intensity of light, while preset VR2 is used for setting the output time period of IC1. When light falls on the LDR, the monostable (IC1) triggers at pin 2, making its output at pin 3 from low to high. This low-to-high transition forms a clock for D flip-flop. The D flip-flop is operated in toggle mode by connecting its Q output to D point. The flip-flop output goes to an inverter (N1). The inverter output is fed to the relay driver transistor.

When the inverter output is low, diode D1 conducts and the current is diverted into the inverter. Hence the relay does not energise. When the inverter output is high, diode D2 conducts and the current is diverted into transistor T. Hence the relay energises. One terminal of the fan is connected to the normally-open (N/O) contact of the relay, while another terminal is connected to the neutral (N) of mains. The mains live (L) is connected to the pole of the relay. When the relay energises, the fan turns on. Otherwise, the fan remains off.

Switches S1 and S3 are for initial resetting of the monostable (IC1) and D flip-flop (IC2), respectively, and switch S2 is used for setting the D flip-flop. Paste a piece of paper on the face of the LDR so that it doesn’t get activated by ambient light. Use a torch to light the LDR. After initial resetting of the monostable and D flip-flop, the inverter output goes high and the fan turns on via the relay. When light falls on the LDR, the fan goes off. If torchlight is again directed toward the LDR, the fan turns on. The sequence repeats.

Initially if switch S2 is used to set the D flip-flop, the fan is held ‘off’. The relay does not energise as the Q output of D flip-flop goes high to make the inverter output low. Directing the light towards the LDR at this moment turns the fan ‘on.’