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11/05/2022

This is the challenge tackled by a team including researchers from Sandia National Laboratories—a challenge that led to development of the Open Threat Assessment Platform, which allows the Transportation Security Administration to respond more quickly and easily to threats to air travel safety.

"When we wanted to change how we screen in response to new threats," said Andrew Cox, a Sandia R&D systems analyst who leads the OTAP project. "The technology was too rigid. TSA compensated by adding procedures. There's a shoe bomber and you have to take your shoes off; liquid explosives arrived, and TSA had to limit liquids and gels."

The platform designed for TSA and Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate will work similarly to Apple's iPhone, providing a common set of interfaces and data standards, which allow a variety of vendors to provide security upgrades and programs that will integrate seamlessly into the OTAP—like building blocks that can be changed out when needed for a specific threat. The intent is to promote innovation, evolve towards a non-proprietary approach to technology, and expand the number of vendors participating in the aviation security market.

Sandia optical engineer Ed Jimenez said that TSA will be able to work through OTAP to collect data continuously and improve algorithms every few months. The standardization and modularized design with an open architecture should not only benefit the travel industry but make a better experience for air travelers.

"When you put an object in your bag that's mistakenly flagged as a threat, the enhanced algorithm has the potential to not ring as a false positive alarm," Jimenez said. "You won't have to open the bag and slow down the line."

The OTAP project, led by Sandia, gathered together a dozen aviation security industry partners including algorithm developers, X-ray vendors and software specialists to create Open Platform Software Library (OPSL). In parallel, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory created a High-Definition Passenger Imaging System, which scans a body. In 2017, Sandia joined forces with PNNL, as well as several algorithm programmers, to combine the scanner with OPSL, creating a new full body machine that will more effectively detect threats. Additionally, OPSL could be combined with PNNL's shoe scanner and other algorithms to allow travelers to keep their shoes on.

11/05/2022

Plants can't speak up when they are thirsty. And visual signs, such as shriveling or browning leaves, don't start until most of their water is gone. To detect water loss earlier, researchers reporting in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces have created a wearable sensor for plant leaves. The system wirelessly transmits data to a smartphone app, allowing for remote management of drought stress in gardens and crops.

Newer wearable devices are more than simple step-counters. Some smart watches now monitor the electrical activity of the wearer's heart with electrodes that sit against the skin. And because many devices can wirelessly share the data that are collected, physicians can monitor and assess their patients' health from a distance.

Similarly, plant-wearable devices could help farmers and gardeners remotely monitor their plants' health, including leaf water content—the key marker of metabolism and drought stress. Previously, researchers had developed metal electrodes for this purpose, but the electrodes had problems staying attached, which reduced the accuracy of the data. So, Renato Lima and colleagues wanted to identify an electrode design that was reliable for long-term monitoring of plants' water stress, while also staying put.

The researchers created two types of electrodes: one made of nickel deposited in a narrow, squiggly pattern, and the other cut from partially burnt paper that was coated with a waxy film. When the team affixed both electrodes to detached soybean leaves with clear adhesive tape, the nickel-based electrodes performed better, producing larger signals as the leaves dried out.

11/05/2022

Reconfigurable or "transformer" systems are robots or other systems that can adapt their state, configuration, or morphology to perform different tasks more effectively. In recent years, roboticists and computer scientists worldwide have developed new autonomous and reconfigurable systems for various applications, including surveillance, cleaning, maintenance, and search and rescue.

Researchers at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) have recently designed a new reconfigurable robot that could assist humans with cleaning and maintenance. This system, introduced in a paper published in the Journal of Mechanical Design, is based on a heuristic approach that could ultimately also be used to create other reconfigurable robots.

"Current reconfigurable robotic systems emphasize software, control and electrical module development," Dr. Abdullah Aamir Hayat, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told TechXplore. "Prior work on transformable systems identified three main transformation principles: expand/collapse, expose/cover, fuse/divide, and 20 facilitators were studied and reported by Prof. Kris L. Wood's group. Furthermore, the abstract mapping between behavior and mechanisms were studied by our group and reported as Transformation design Principles as enablers for designing Reconfigurable Robots. However, there is a lack of a heuristic approach to designing reconfigurable robotic systems and sub-systems for real-life applications like cleaning and maintenance."