Robotics, health care, environment highlighted at NIWeek day 3

Austin, TX. Ray Almgren, NI’s VP of academic relations, kicked off day 3 of NIWeek noting that over the last year students participating in the FIRST robotics competition made use of 1800 CompactRIO controllers costing $10,000 each—providing them free thanks to many industry sponsors.

For younger children, Almgren, said, Lego is offering LabView-powered Lego Mindstorms NXT version 2.0, building on the version released in 2006.

University of California at San Diego Prof. Thomas Bewley described ways to have small robots climb over large obstacles (which could be useful in investigating mining accidents, for instance)—roll when possible, use multifunction mechanisms (wheels and plungers, for example), and apply feedback. iHop is a hopping robot with two wheels and two arms, iceCube is a self-propelled self-guided sphere with 3000-rpm gyroscopes, and Switchblade is a treaded robot that has a large mass mounted at the end of booms and can "throw its weight around."

Protecting our environment also got some attention. A video highlighted how Envirofit reduces indoor air pollution in developing countries, designing low-emission cook stoves. Representatives from the Engines and Energy Conversion Laboratory at Colorado State described analysis and optimization of the Envirofit cook stove. They also described technology from Solix, which is scaling up to make a lot of biofuels from algae, deploying at Coyote Gulch a method of trapping carbon dioxide from a plant. They use NI hardware and software to gather and process the data necessary to optimize the process. The goal is to surround carbon emitters with algae ponds to make oil from algae.

Another challenge, said Almgren, is providing health care in developing countries, where there might be only one doctor for 50,000 people. Representatives from Penn State showed how a system called Mashavu, based on laptop and a cell phone that can facilitate remote diagnosis, transmitting data from a scale, thermometer, spirometer, stethoscope, pulse-rate monitor, and blood-pressure monitor. An open-source telemedicine platform makes the data available anywhere in the world.