Happy Friday, folks! This week, we look at innovative engineering technology that could potentially change the world as we know it — from an electronic chip that functions like a human lung to using video games instead of passwords for our data and electronics.

Enjoy!

• Organ-on-a-Chip Mimics Deadly Lung Condition
• ABB Solves 100-Year-Old Electrical Puzzle – New Technology to Enable Future DC Grid
• Kids Crystal-Ball Future
• Engineers Use Video Games as “Cognitive Fingerprints” Instead of Traditional Passwords

MIT Technology Reveiw
Organ-on-a-Chip Mimics Deadly Lung Condition

Lab lungs: Liquid and air are pumped into the different channels of this lung-on-a-chip to mimic human lung function. Image credit: The Technology Review

Researchers from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have successfully simulated a deadly lung condition (pulmonary edema, or fluid in the lung) on an electronic chip.The study looked at drug toxicity and identified potential new therapies to prevent this condition.

While this is a step in the right direction when it comes to developing disease models, we’re still a bit far off from developing a complete integrated-body-on-a-chip where researchers can link the organs together, mimicking the whole human response. Without pulling each of the pieces together and seeing how they interact, the full picture of how this lung condition operates is still unknown.

This ties in closely with the idea of systems-level engineering simulation. In order to be confident that a product will perform as it’s supposed to in the real world, an engineer needs to understand how each component, or subsystem, works together (or interferes with each other).

Manufacturing Business Technology
ABB Solves 100-Year-Old Electrical Puzzle – New Technology to Enable Future DC Grid

ABB (a global leader in power and automation technology) has officially broken down the age-old barrier to the development of direct current (DC) transmission grids. Why is this cool, you ask? This technology breakthrough will pave the way for more efficient and reliable electricity systems around the world.

After years of research, ABB has developed the first circuit breaker for high voltage direct currents (HVDC). By combining extremely fast mechanics with power electronics to interconnect countries and continents, balancing and reinforcing the existing alternate current transmission networks.

ABB has an established HVDC grid simulation center developing solutions for future DC overlay grid operations.

There’s a reason it has taken this long to figure out this 100 year old electrical puzzle — and that is because it’s complicated. I’d like to think that engineering simulation technology has played a role in this development, but we can’t say for sure.

EE Times
Kids Crystal-Ball Future

Instead of the traditional forecast into the upcoming year that is often pervasive in magazines this time of the year, ANSYS and subsidiary Apache Design took a different perspective. We recently asked our employees worldwide to ask their children what they think is coming up in technology for a feature in EE Times’ 40th anniversary edition. Here’s what the kids had to say:

• Video games that project a 3D hologram that you can interact  with and play against others around the world”
• The development of bionic parts
• Personal flying vehicles with self-guided software and hardware systems that will replace road-driven vehicles
• 5D TV – adding smell and mist/wind to our 3D audio and visual TVs
• A quantum chip or an IC made from silicon that works on light

Other suggestions from the more energy conscious include a human integrated computer powered by human energy instead of batteries and homes where power is delivered from energy producing activities that can be shared by an entire community.

Looks like we have some innovative and imaginative kids in the ANSYS engineering technology family!

Complex Gaming 
Engineers Use Video Games as “Cognitive Fingerprints” Instead of Traditional Passwords

While compiling this blog every week, I learn some pretty interesting things. But the idea of using “the way a person thinks about solving a puzzle and then executes it” as a password is kind of mind-blowing. Mark one more for cool engineering technology!

According to researchers at Southwest Research Institute, everyone has a unique and completely individual way of tackling problems – much like fingerprints. So, instead of a password, engineers are looking at the process a person takes to solving a problem as a unique identifying factor that cannot be replicated or hacked.

This process is currently being tested – so it doesn’t sound like it’s far from being a reality!

Have a great weekend!