Biobots

North Carolina State University’s iBionics Laboratory has developed a way to create “cyborg cockroaches” to help find victims of disasters such as earthquakes.

The cockroaches are fitted with wireless control systems that let a human operator hear sounds of distress or see via the camera system.

The National Geographic website has an article with an interview with Assistant Professor of Engineering, Alper Bozkurt, who led the cockroach biobot project.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/09/120907-cyborg-cockroaches-video-science-remote-control-robots-bugs/

My robotic engineering students found this extremely interesting, and the article generated a lot of discussion of further uses of such a biobot, and ideas for other animals that could be used in similar projects.

Innovations in communication technology

Since the beginning of the year, there have been three innovations in mobile phones that my IT students have been interested in: Samsung Galaxy S4, Polytron Technologies transparent mobile phone, and BlackBerry Z10.

The website of The Guardian has short videos of each innovation.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 video is 02:28 long, and lists the features that are innovative: eye-tracking technology, 5-inch full HD AMOLED screen, 13-megapixel rear camera and the latest Android operating system. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/video/2013/mar/15/samsung-galaxy-s4-video

The innovations of the transparent mobile phone include images on both sides of phone, conductive glass, 4.3-inch screen, and that it’s 25% lighter than iPhone 5. The time of the video is only 00:53.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/video/2013/feb/20/transparent-mobile-phone-developed-video

The video of the BlackBerry Z10, presented by Charles Arthur, Technology Editor of The Guardian, is the longest at 06:03, but also includes questions about how competitive this innovation will be on the market, concluding that it’s more likely to be successful for corporations rather than private consumers.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/video/2013/jan/30/blackberry-z10-video-review

Which innovations and features did my students find most interesting?

The video of the transparent mobile phone generated the liveliest reaction from my students. Some said it seemed unbelievable, and would need more input before they could understand how it worked. This inspired some of them to search for more information to present the following lesson.

For BlackBerry Z10 they felt that the most interesting feature was the separation of private and work areas, but added that Android was planning to add this to.

They were not very impressed with the Samsung S4, saying it was too much like the S3 (which some of them have). They felt that the new features were interesting, but not really necessary. But students who do not have the S3 model said they would definitely be interested in this new model.

The information about these innovations in mobile phone technology is useful for IT students, as well as students of business and marketing. But since so many of our students have mobile phones, this topic could result in an interesting discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of each model, as well as speculation about innovations of the future.

The videos themselves are short process descriptions, and focus on innovation, marketing, and comparison of features of mobile phones.

Technology to catch cheating on online tests

As more online courses are being offered for credit, the problem arises of how to monitor online exams for those courses. Such issues include knowing whether the test taker is cheating or not, and whether the test taker is really the student who registered for the course.

A New York Times article from 2 March 2013, “Keeping an Eye on Online Test-Takers,” focuses on developing technologies to deal with these issues. These technologies are for both monitoring test takers by remote proctoring, and also for determining whether the student taking the exam is the same person that has been participating in the course.

The topic of this article could lead to an interesting class discussion about what the students would design for this purpose. Many students might be motivated to cheat on online tests if they could get away with it, but as future engineering professionals they would also be aware of the consequences of passing a course through cheating rather than personal ability and expertise.

Students could brainstorm their own solutions to the problem, including the kind of monitoring they would design. It’s like having expert hackers design software to prevent hacking. Then they could compare their ideas with those presented in the article.

In addition, they could the discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the different techniques presented. These techniques could be rated according to which are more efficient, practical, effective, ethical, economical (for student and for testing institution).

Some of the ideas also raise ethical issues. For example:

• Cheating itself is, of course, an ethical issue. Professionals who earned a degree by cheating might not be able to fulfill their professional duties as well as colleagues who earned their credentials legitimately.
• But developing eavesdropping technology for tests could also lead to abuse in other areas (see my blog post “Big Brother is tracking you,” 26 February 2013).

A computer science professor is quoted in article, “Having a camera watch you, and software keep track of your mouse clicks, that does smack of Big Brother,” he said. “But it doesn’t seem any worse than an instructor at the front constantly looking at you, and it may even be more efficient.” Would your students agree?

The article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/technology/new-technologies-aim-to-foil-online-course-cheating.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130303

Source of information about innovations

Innovations report is a website that collects articles about innovations in technology from industry websites and professional journals. The description on its website includes: “With content from more than 8,200 partners and 201,000 publications, innovations-report offers up-to-date R&D results and information on leading-edge technologies, processes, products and services from innovative companies and well-known research institutes around the world, thus making us a key driver of global innovation.”

The site has a list of 20 engineering areas to choose from, and within each area there are further subdivisions with a long list of articles. Examples of engineering areas include: architecture & construction, business & finance, health & medicine, information technology, power & electrical engineering, transportation & logistics.

Within the area machine engineering, “innovations-report offers informative reports and articles covering technologies such as automation, motion, power train, energy, conveyor, plastics, lightweight construction, logistics/warehousing, measurement systems, machine tools and control engineering.”

The articles are complete and detailed, but short and focused enough for intermediate students and above to be able to read. The article, “Technical update for embedded industrial PC’s” (from Siemens) in the machine engineering section is only 297 words. The information for the third-generation Intel Core i7 processors includes a technical description and a description of the features that make it innovative.

The list of subject areas is extensive, and within each area there are so many articles that information can be found for any type of engineering class or student.

Not only can these articles be used for reading and class work, but students can be encouraged to visit the site on their own to focus on the specific areas that are of interest to them, either personally or professionally.

The website: http://www.innovations-report.com/index.php