Top TechTop Tech #16: Printing propulsion, curving sensors, altering eye color
Promising products and interesting innovations
Today’s Top Tech:
• Printing propulsion: Accion’s ion engines
• Curved sensors claimed to zoom without moving parts
• Change your eye color
Printing propulsion: Accion’s ion engines
Satellites use tiny ion engines for maneuvering — and AccionSystems says it can now print propulsion systems for satellites based on its “proprietaryion beam technology.”
What’s more, the “revolutionary new approach” uses modularthruster chips “that can go anywhere on a satellite, in any number.”
The company says it “got rid of bulky tanks and valves, explosive propellants, and expensive manufacturing techniques so that our customers can launch satellites that are not just affordable, but also extremely capable.” The ionic liquid propellant is non-toxic, non-explosive, and extremely efficient, they add. “Our systems produce thrust using electric fields to accelerate ions. Ions leave the thrusters through small holes in the extractor grids over each chip, and propel the spacecraft in the opposite direction. Our thrust-producing ions are supplied from our ionic liquid propellant…” The result is “higher thrust-to-mass, higher thrust-to-volume, and lower power than today’s ion engines.”
The company’s
site is here.
Here’s
a video explaining the tech.
Technology
Review reports more.
Curved sensors claimed to zoom without moving parts
A new variable-density sensor design yields “greater sensitivity, lower module profile, superior zooming, and dynamic focusing capabilities,” claims a Palo Alto start-up “all without moving parts.”
Optiz says its proprietary “Zoom In” and “Zoom Out” architecture technology uses a combination of unique pixel design, exclusive optical interface structure, and specialized imaging algorithms “to address the lack of zoom function in the mobile imaging platform.”
There’s more information here. (Hat tip to Imaging Resource.)
Change your eye color
File this under “interesting but not important.” Well, maybe someday the technique could be useful for something less shallow…
“We all have blue eyes,” claims Stroma Medical. “We change the way the world sees you…” The company uses lasers to give your eyes back that hue — basically by burning away the darker pigments.
“In the case of brown eyes, a thin layer of brown pigment covers the front surface of the iris (the colored part of the eye),” the company says. “The Strōma laser disrupts this layer of pigment, causing the body to initiate a natural and gradual tissue-removal process. Once the tissue is removed, the patient’s natural blue eye is revealed.”
Aigh, I’m gettin’ a migraine just thinking about it too much…
