The Leading Edge: Technologies to Watch in 2010

When held in your hands, a sheet of buckypaper seems unimpressive, with its thin and flimsy texture more closely resembling a piece of carbon paper than a breakthrough material. But don't be fooled. This seemingly modest sheet of paper — made from tube-shaped carbon molecules 50,000 times thinner than a human hair — when stacked, nets a material that's 500 times stronger than steel, yet 10 times lighter.

Buckypaper's strength is only equaled by its unique properties. Unlike conventional composite materials, it conducts electricity similar to copper or silicon, yet disperses heat like steel or brass. As a material, buckypaper holds the promise of changing the way airplanes, automobiles and electronics are made.

Such breakthroughs hold the capacity to touch every aspect of our lives. Manufacturing has undergone startling changes over the last 20 years, including radical advances in materials, controls, communications, electronics and software. These developments reduce the incidence of human error, allow for the accumulation and study of performance data, create the possibility for instant contact with customers and establish flexibility in operations in ways that only a few visionaries might have imagined.

Today, innovation is being driven by a world suddenly grown smaller, where the ability to access and influence technology is available to a wider range of individuals, spread across a growing number of industrializing nations. According to Cliff Waldman, an economist with the Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI, who co-authored a paper on innovation in the manufacturing sector, globalization is the single biggest driver of innovation today.

“We have seen more and more countries — large, potentially powerful developing markets — joining the global trading system, becoming both competitors and potential collaborators for us,” says Waldman. “The challenges that these new emerging markets present should be clear drivers of innovation. We need to differentiate our products and processes, get more efficient and get more interesting to the rest of the world. In short, we need to be out there competing.”

Smarter Sensors

Technology isn't just reaching a wider audience of users; it's also getting smarter, especially on the plant floor. According to Sujeet Chand, senior vice president for advanced technology and chief technology officer for Rockwell Automation, a smarter device implies technology with a capacity for processing and communications. With processing capability, he says, intelligence can be embedded.

Sensing technologies are evolving at a rapid rate, allowing for the possibility of sensing at the device level. Today, for example, manufacturing facilities and distribution centers use motor protection devices, such as circuit breakers, which sit on the power line to monitor a spike in current or power source. But, soon, with a little more intelligence in sensing, a device could sense power consumption and quality, monitoring and recording any changes in status, becoming not only a tool for control but also for feedback.

“You may have, in the future, nano-sensors that, for example, you would embed in the grease inside an electric motor,” says Chand. “The nano-sensor would sense the properties, such as metal particles, and indicate if there may be potential for breakdown in the insulation.”

New research at the Georgia Institute of Technology could soon make predicting the degradation and remaining useful life of mechanical and electronic equipment easier and more accurate.

Nagi Gebraeel, an assistant professor at Georgia Tech's H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, has developed models that use data from real-time sensor measurements to calculate and continuously revise the amount of useful life remaining for different engineering systems based on their current condition and health status. These predictions are then integrated with maintenance management and spare-parts supply chain policies as part of an autonomous, sense-and-respond logistics network.