Servicing nuclear power plants via robots is an engineer's dream because it limits personnel radiation exposure. Nuclear Engineering International reports on one plant's use of a remote-controlled robot truck to perform simple visual inspections. The truck features a wireless telemetry system connected to a remote controlled camera.

Improving burner efficiency in coal-fired power plants becomes easier with this enhanced oxygen and combustibles transmitter. It combines oxygen and combustibles measurement capabilities, and includes improved sensor technology that reduces drift. Support for Foundation Fieldbus and HART communication protocols are included.

ConnectorSupplier.com says the orthogonal midplane architecture can optimize printed circuit board backplane connections to maximize performance. Orthogonal midplanes have front and rear daughtercards positioned 90 degrees to each other on opposite sides of the midplane. This gives a direct connection between front and back daughtercard.

Manufacturing operations that require hand soldered connections can be greatly improved using integrated preforms. Connector Specifier says linked solder preforms let manufacturers place a cluster of solder units in position in one motion rather than individually. Preforms eliminate placing washers on connector pins with tweezers.

Industrial equipment can't run without lubricants, so monitoring these fluids is critical. Sensors says sensing lubricant quality online poses particular challenges. One solution combines a transducer with an integrated thermocouple, microcontroller, wireless communications unit, fluid condition-monitoring algorithms and diagnosis display.

Place your cell phone in the vicinity of a wireless charging device (see video), wait for a few minutes, and leave with a fully charged phone. According to research firm Strategy Analytics, this intriguing vision could soon become a reality. The key is the combination of two emerging technologies: wireless charging and super capacitors.

Seems you can't buy an electronic device without a color electronic display. That makes improved display viewability and decreased power consumption critical. New Electronics says a MEMS-based technology called mirasol displays has paper-like readability in most any ambient light condition, and consumes less power than competing solutions.

Nanotech appears in the news daily via research findings and patent applications. But of greater significance is the over 1,000 nanotechnology-enabled products available to consumers. The Project on Emerging Technologies lists some of the most significant including cookware, wearable sensors that monitor posture, appliances, electronics, and lighter and stronger tennis rackets.

Do you take full advantage of your connections? Are you LinkedIn? Probably so, as more and more technical professionals are using the site as their main online business networking tool. This five-minute video shows you in step-by-step fashion how to use LinkedIn to find your next job. The video presents a detailed blueprint of how to use your contacts to further your job search.

If you're a gadget freak, measuring height with a tape measure is way too prosaic, especially when you can build a complex electronic device to accomplish the same task. As described in Design News, the dodecahedral barometer determines a subject's height by measuring the difference in barometric pressure between head and feet. The gadget was inspired by the recent release of the inexpensive and accurate Serta model 270 barometric pressure sensor.

Is There a Robot in Your Future?

Industrial robots are widely used, but domestic counterparts lag behind. Will there be a killer app that leads to widespread deployment of home-based robots? If so, what might it be?