Planar microfluidics - liquid handling without walls

The miniaturization and integration of electronic circuitry has not only made the enormous increase in performance of semiconductor devices possible but also spawned a myriad of new products and applications ranging from a cellular phone to a personal computer. Similarly, the miniaturization and integration of chemical and biological processes will revolutionize life sciences. Drug design and diagnostics in the genomic era require reliable and cost effective high throughput technologies which can be integrated and allow for a massive parallelization. Microfluidics is the core technology to realize such miniaturized laboratories with feature sizes on a submillimeter scale. Here, we report on a novel microfluidic technology meeting the basic requirements for a microfluidic processor analogous to those of its electronic counterpart: Cost effective production, modular design, high speed, scalability and programmability

Neural Simulations on Multi-Core Architectures

Neuroscience is witnessing increasing knowledge about the anatomy and electrophysiological properties of neurons and their connectivity, leading to an ever increasing computational complexity of neural simulations. At the same time, a rather radical change in personal computer technology emerges with the establishment of multi-cores: high-density, explicitly parallel processor architectures for both high performance as well as standard desktop computers. This work introduces strategies for the parallelization of biophysically realistic neural simulations based on the compartmental modeling technique and results of such an implementation, with a strong focus on multi-core architectures and automation, i.e. user-transparent load balancing

Processor-in-the-loop architecture design and experimental validation for an autonomous racing vehicle

Self-driving vehicles have experienced an increase in research interest in the last decades. Nevertheless, fully autonomous vehicles are still far from being a common means of transport. This paper presents the design and experimental validation of a processor-in-the-loop (PIL) architecture for an autonomous sports car. The considered vehicle is an all-wheel drive full-electric single-seater prototype. The retained PIL architecture includes all the modules required for autonomous driving at system level: environment perception, trajectory planning, and control. Specifically, the perception pipeline exploits obstacle detection algorithms based on Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the trajectory planning is based on a modified Rapidly-exploring Random Tree (RRT) algorithm based on Dubins curves, while the vehicle is controlled via a Model Predictive Control (MPC) strategy. The considered PIL layout is implemented firstly using a low-cost card-sized computer for fast code verification purposes. Furthermore, the proposed PIL architecture is compared in terms of performance to an alternative PIL using high-performance real-time target computing machine. Both PIL architectures exploit User Datagram Protocol (UDP) protocol to properly communicate with a personal computer. The latter PIL architecture is validated in real-time using experimental data. Moreover, they are also validated with respect to the general autonomous pipeline that runs in parallel on the personal computer during numerical simulation

Compact Simultaneous-beam Optical Strain Measurement System, Phase 5

Recent advances on the laser speckle strain measurement system under development at NASA Lewis Research Center have resulted in a compact, easy-to-use measurement package having many performance improvements over previous systems. NASA has developed this high performance optical strain measurement system for high temperature material testing applications. The system is based on I. Yamaguchi's two-beam speckle-shift strain measurement theory, and uses a new optical design that allows simultaneous recording of laser speckle patterns. This design greatly improves system response over previous implementations of the two-beam speckle-shift technique. The degree of immunity to transient rigid body motions is no longer dependent on the data transfer rate. The system automatically calculates surface strains at a frequency of about 5 Hz using a high speed digital signal processor in a personal computer. This system is fully automated, and can be operated remotely. This report describes the designs and methods used by the system, and shows low temperature strain test results obtained from small diameter tungsten-rhenium and palladium-chrome wires

Count three for wear able computers

This paper is a postprint of a paper submitted to and accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the IEE Eurowearable 2003 Conference, and is subject to Institution of Engineering and Technology Copyright. The copy of record is available at the IET Digital Library. A revised version of this paper was also published in Electronics Systems and Software, also subject to Institution of Engineering and Technology Copyright. The copy of record is also available at the IET Digital Library.A description of 'ubiquitous computer' is presented. Ubiquitous computers imply portable computers embedded into everyday objects, which would replace personal computers. Ubiquitous computers can be mapped into a three-tier scheme, differentiated by processor performance and flexibility of function. The power consumption of mobile devices is one of the most important design considerations. The size of a wearable system is often a design limitation

Reconfigurable Mobile Multimedia Systems

This paper discusses reconfigurability issues in lowpower hand-held multimedia systems, with particular emphasis on energy conservation. We claim that a radical new approach has to be taken in order to fulfill the requirements - in terms of processing power and energy consumption - of future mobile applications. A reconfigurable systems-architecture in combination with a QoS driven operating system is introduced that can deal with the inherent dynamics of a mobile system. We present the preliminary results of studies we have done on reconfiguration in hand-held mobile computers: by having reconfigurable media streams, by using reconfigurable processing modules and by migrating functions

The Design of a System Architecture for Mobile Multimedia Computers

This chapter discusses the system architecture of a portable computer, called Mobile Digital Companion, which provides support for handling multimedia applications energy efficiently. Because battery life is limited and battery weight is an important factor for the size and the weight of the Mobile Digital Companion, energy management plays a crucial role in the architecture. As the Companion must remain usable in a variety of environments, it has to be flexible and adaptable to various operating conditions. The Mobile Digital Companion has an unconventional architecture that saves energy by using system decomposition at different levels of the architecture and exploits locality of reference with dedicated, optimised modules. The approach is based on dedicated functionality and the extensive use of energy reduction techniques at all levels of system design. The system has an architecture with a general-purpose processor accompanied by a set of heterogeneous autonomous programmable modules, each providing an energy efficient implementation of dedicated tasks. A reconfigurable internal communication network switch exploits locality of reference and eliminates wasteful data copies

The system architecture of the Pocket Companion

In the Moby Dick project we design the architecture of a so-called Pocket Companion. It is a small personal portable computer with wireless communication facilities for every day use. The typical use of the Pocket Companion induces a number of requirements concerning security, performance, energy consumption, communication and size. We have shown that these requirements are interrelated and can only be met optimal with one single architecture. The Pocket Companion architecture consists of a central switch with a security module surrounded by several modules. The Pocket Companion is a personal machine. Communication, and particularly wireless communication, is essential for the system to support electronic transactions. Such a system requires a good security infrastructure not only for safeguarding personal data, but also to allow safe (financial) transactions. The integration of a security module in the Pocket Companion architecture provides the basis for a secure environment.\ud Because battery life is limited and battery weight is an important factor for the size and the weight of the Pocket Companion, energy consumption plays a crucial role in the architecture. An important theme of the architecture is: enough performance for minimal energy consumption