PRODUCT LIFECYCLE STORIESINSIGHT ON PRODUCTS, MANUFACTURING, AND SERVICE

UNDERWATER CITY: 3D Printed Reef Restores Bahrain’s Marine Life

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:

China’s Angst: When Low-Cost Manufacturing Dies

Google Glass Allows Surgeons to Multitask

4 Ways to Boost Workplace Innovation

US Sailing Brings Science and Engineering to Kids

Fall 2013

PAGE : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 blogs.ptc.com

PRODUCT LIFECYCLE STORIESINSIGHT ON PRODUCTS, MANUFACTURING, AND SERVICE

Fall 2013 – Table of Contents

05 China’s Angst: When Low-Cost Manufacturing DiesThe Chinese are becoming quietly desperate. They know that they are no longer the low-cost place to manufacture, but they don’t know what to do about it.

0709

15 Google Glass Allows Surgeons to MultitaskPhilips Healthcare and Accenture are developing a new way to help surgeons deliver more efficient and effective patient care using Google Glass technology.

19 Can Crowdfunding Boost Engineering and Design Innovation?Crowdfunding – already well established in our lexicon – is the way to raise capital for hip new projects. From 3D doodlers toflying cars, it’s disrupting the way enterprises, entrepreneurs, non-profits, and individuals fund their initiatives.

21 Using Smartphones to Diagnose DiseaseEngineers are taking advantage of the flexibility of apps and the computing power of smartphones to replicate the functions of medical devices and even laboratory instruments.

13 Tough-to-Design Soft Robots Challenge Engineers to Think DifferentlySomeday soon, your life may be saved by a weird-looking octopus, squid, or caterpillar – a squishy, form-changing, animal-like device that’s actually a soft robot.

17 Vending Machines Dispense Bicycle Helmets in BostonA green solution to traffic congestion and carbon emissions, bike-sharing programs have become ubiquitous in crowded cities worldwide. But what happens if you forget your helmet? One Boston-based company has the solution.

4 Ways to Boost Workplace InnovationInnovation isn’t the purview of lone geniuses being struck, lightening style, by inspiration out of the blue.

US Sailing Brings Science and Engineering to KidsSailing organizations get together to provide kids with hands-on integrated learning opportunities that inspire interest inphysics, marine biology, technology, and robotics.

11 China Looks to U.S. for New Manufacturing ModelChinese manufacturers are facing hard times. Debt is up, sales are down. Signs of relief are followed by signs of trouble. In response, China is beginning to study how American manufacturers reacted to a similar crisis in the 1980’s.

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Feature Article

UNDERWATER CITY: 3D Printed Reef Restores Bahrain’s Marine LifeCoral reefs around the world are disappearing at an alarming rate. Pollution, overfishing, coastal development, and global warming are all culprits, and the Persian Gulf is one of the hardest hit regions. Reef Arabia’s custom designed 3D printed reef units are helping to restore reefs and attract new fish populations off the coast of Bahrain.

blogs.ptc.com

PRODUCT LIFECYCLE STORIESINSIGHT ON PRODUCTS, MANUFACTURING, AND SERVICE

Fall 2013 – Underwater City

Underwater City: 3D Printed Reef Restores Bahrain’s Marine Life By Nancy Pardo

Coral reefs around the world are disappearing at an alarming rate. Pollution, overfishing, coastal development, and global warming are all culprits. In the waters near China, 80 percent of the coral reefs have died over the last 30 years and, accord-ing to a 2012 study from the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences (AIMS) and the University of Wollongong, 50 percent of the Great Barrier Reef’s coral has disappeared over roughly the same timeframe.

In the Persian Gulf the story is similar. Coastal and offshore development – which often involves large-scale dredging, infilling, coastal modifications, and the creation of artificial waterways – has left the coral reef ecosystem in waters off Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain severely damaged.

The World Resources Institute estimates that coral cover in Bahrain has dropped from at least 50 percent in the 1980s to nearly zero percent today.

More research, tighter regulation, improved project planning, and better public awareness all need to stack up to prevent more loss. But in the meantime, one organization is set on restoring reefs off the coast of Bahrain.

Reef Arabia designs and manufactures artificial reefs (or constructed reefs, as it prefers to call them) with a view to regenerating precious ocean habitat and improving fish populations, particularly critical in Bahrain, where overfishing has vastly diminished marine life.

The Reef Arabia team – made up of experts from the local area and members of Australia-based Sustainable Oceans Interna-tional (SOI) – has already submerged nearly 3,000 concrete Reef Balls and custom designed reef units near Bahrain, successfully attracting new fish populations and helping replace some of the reefs Bahrain has lost.

Several of the concrete reef features were designed to reflect Bahrain architecture – a strategy SOI refers to as “culturally sensitive reef design.”

A wind tower – common in the traditional architecture of that region and used to generate natural ventilation – is the centerpiece of the Bahrain reef. The wind tower features are both aesthetically pleasing and functional, specifically designed to appeal to certain fish species which use them for shelter and a place to congregate.

For David Lennon, Reef Arabia team member and director at SOI, the reef is a dream come true.

“I grew up in Saudi Arabia and came to love the marine life of the Gulf. I always admired historic Arab architecture and this project allowed me to tour the old town of Bahrain and select key building designs that would appeal to the fish we were aiming to attract,” Lennon says. “Just like us, fish have preferences for shape and size.”

But reefs formed from concrete molds, even with Lennon at the helm, have their limitations. And that’s why Reef Arabia in collaboration with SOI, 3D program specialist James Gardiner, and rapid manufacturing experts DShape, is pioneering a new 3D printed reef unit made of non-toxic patented sandstone material. Two of these 3D printed reefs, weighing 1,100 pounds, were sunk off the coast of Bahrain last fall.

“Sandstone, unlike concrete, is closer to a natural earth rock and has a neutral pH surface which makes it more attractive to coral larvae looking for a home,” Lennon says. And the “bumpy, knobby bits” on the sandstone units provide refuge for the common snapper and generate current eddies and multiple horizontal surfaces that coral larvae seem to prefer.

The 3D printing technology has allowed the Reef Arabia team to create the more intricate designs found in natural coral structures. “With 3D printing we can get closer to natural design because of its ability to produce very organic shapes and almost lay down material similar to how nature does it,” Lennon says.

Another advantage 3D printed reefs have over traditionally molded concrete: it’s easier to build diversity into a 3D printed model and much easier to replicated quickly. “We could even generate a 3D image file of a natural reef and then print it,” Lennon says.

Designing diversity into a reef is critical, says Lennon, because diversity in habitat drives diversity of species, a major factor in creating an ecosystem resilient to climate change. Using a 3D printing program the Reef Arabia team can create random variations in the reef units so no two are exactly the same.

It remains to be seen whether Reef Arabia’s 3D printing method will be faster and more cost-efficient in the long-term, but Lennon is hopeful. The prototype reef units took a week to make from scratch, and the actual printing – which involves progressively layering the sandstone with a print head 5m in diameter – takes about a day. The reef units can be printed four at a time. And while concrete is strong and long-lasting, the use of sandstone will cut down on the project’s carbon footprint too, as sandstone requires less fossil fuel than concrete to produce.

So, do the fish really like the 3D printed reefs better than the concrete ones? It’s early days, says Lennon. “But I suspect if we did a detailed count we would find the 3D units have a greater number of different types of fish and the crevices created by the knobby lumps will support more cryptic fish, crabs, and shrimp which the [concrete] Reef Balls or other units can’t.

PAGE : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 blogs.ptc.com

Coral reefs around the world are disappearing at an alarming rate. Pollution, overfishing, coastal development, and global warming are all culprits. In the waters near China, 80 percent of the coral reefs have died over the last 30 years and, accord-ing to a 2012 study from the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences (AIMS) and the University of Wollongong, 50 percent of the Great Barrier Reef’s coral has disappeared over roughly the same timeframe.

In the Persian Gulf the story is similar. Coastal and offshore development – which often involves large-scale dredging, infilling, coastal modifications, and the creation of artificial waterways – has left the coral reef ecosystem in waters off Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain severely damaged.

The World Resources Institute estimates that coral cover in Bahrain has dropped from at least 50 percent in the 1980s to nearly zero percent today.

More research, tighter regulation, improved project planning, and better public awareness all need to stack up to prevent more loss. But in the meantime, one organization is set on restoring reefs off the coast of Bahrain.

Reef Arabia designs and manufactures artificial reefs (or constructed reefs, as it prefers to call them) with a view to regenerating precious ocean habitat and improving fish populations, particularly critical in Bahrain, where overfishing has vastly diminished marine life.

The Reef Arabia team – made up of experts from the local area and members of Australia-based Sustainable Oceans Interna-tional (SOI) – has already submerged nearly 3,000 concrete Reef Balls and custom designed reef units near Bahrain, successfully attracting new fish populations and helping replace some of the reefs Bahrain has lost.

Several of the concrete reef features were designed to reflect Bahrain architecture – a strategy SOI refers to as “culturally sensitive reef design.”

A wind tower – common in the traditional architecture of that region and used to generate natural ventilation – is the centerpiece of the Bahrain reef. The wind tower features are both aesthetically pleasing and functional, specifically designed to appeal to certain fish species which use them for shelter and a place to congregate.

PRODUCT LIFECYCLE STORIESINSIGHT ON PRODUCTS, MANUFACTURING, AND SERVICE

Fall 2013 – Underwater City

For David Lennon, Reef Arabia team member and director at SOI, the reef is a dream come true.

“I grew up in Saudi Arabia and came to love the marine life of the Gulf. I always admired historic Arab architecture and this project allowed me to tour the old town of Bahrain and select key building designs that would appeal to the fish we were aiming to attract,” Lennon says. “Just like us, fish have preferences for shape and size.”

But reefs formed from concrete molds, even with Lennon at the helm, have their limitations. And that’s why Reef Arabia in collaboration with SOI, 3D program specialist James Gardiner, and rapid manufacturing experts DShape, is pioneering a new 3D printed reef unit made of non-toxic patented sandstone material. Two of these 3D printed reefs, weighing 1,100 pounds, were sunk off the coast of Bahrain last fall.

“Sandstone, unlike concrete, is closer to a natural earth rock and has a neutral pH surface which makes it more attractive to coral larvae looking for a home,” Lennon says. And the “bumpy, knobby bits” on the sandstone units provide refuge for the common snapper and generate current eddies and multiple horizontal surfaces that coral larvae seem to prefer.

The 3D printing technology has allowed the Reef Arabia team to create the more intricate designs found in natural coral structures. “With 3D printing we can get closer to natural design because of its ability to produce very organic shapes and almost lay down material similar to how nature does it,” Lennon says.

Another advantage 3D printed reefs have over traditionally molded concrete: it’s easier to build diversity into a 3D printed model and much easier to replicated quickly. “We could even generate a 3D image file of a natural reef and then print it,” Lennon says.

Designing diversity into a reef is critical, says Lennon, because diversity in habitat drives diversity of species, a major factor in creating an ecosystem resilient to climate change. Using a 3D printing program the Reef Arabia team can create random variations in the reef units so no two are exactly the same.

It remains to be seen whether Reef Arabia’s 3D printing method will be faster and more cost-efficient in the long-term, but Lennon is hopeful. The prototype reef units took a week to make from scratch, and the actual printing – which involves progressively layering the sandstone with a print head 5m in diameter – takes about a day. The reef units can be printed four at a time. And while concrete is strong and long-lasting, the use of sandstone will cut down on the project’s carbon footprint too, as sandstone requires less fossil fuel than concrete to produce.

So, do the fish really like the 3D printed reefs better than the concrete ones? It’s early days, says Lennon. “But I suspect if we did a detailed count we would find the 3D units have a greater number of different types of fish and the crevices created by the knobby lumps will support more cryptic fish, crabs, and shrimp which the [concrete] Reef Balls or other units can’t.

3D printed reef from Reef Arabia and SOI

Reef Arabia

PAGE : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 blogs.ptc.com

By Mark McKay

PRODUCT LIFECYCLE STORIESINSIGHT ON PRODUCTS, MANUFACTURING, AND SERVICE

Fall 2013 – China’s Angst: When Low-Cost Manufacturing Dies

China’s Angst: When Low-Cost Manufacturing Dies

Global manufacturing is in transition. The advantage of Chinese manufacturers is slipping, and every day brings more news of another American manufacturer gaining (or recover-ing) a little piece of market share.

As both a college lecturer and strategic adviser to firms on both sides of the water, I’ve watched this process unfold for several years. And while we hear a lot about the Chinese economy from an American perspective, we don’t hear much about China from the Chinese point of view.

The truth is, the Chinese are becoming quietly desperate. They know that they are no longer the low-cost place to manufac-ture, but they don’t know what to do about it.

Many of these companies built their entire business model around cheap labor. Now that advantage is gone. Most Chinese business owners realize that they need to radically change their thinking about concepts of quality and productivi-ty. But meanwhile they are suffering serious cash flow prob-lems, and the shakeout is going to be very noticeable.

The response of typical Chinese manufacturers to this new climate is very similar to the response of many American manufacturers in the 1980’s, with similar results.

Here are the commonalities that I am seeing, none of which really make the Chinese manufacturer stronger:

1. Denial. They blame current difficulties on external challeng-es, not on their own outdated business models.

2. Frustration with employees. Chinese business owners are unhappy with their workers. In the past, workers would accept low wages and long hours without complaint. Now, workers demand high wages and will quit if they don’t like the job. The managers don’t understand how to manage without being autocrats, and that doesn’t play well with the younger generation.

3. Frustration with bankers. Chinese banks for many years did whatever was necessary to maintain the growth. Now the easy loans are gone, and factories are saddled with debt. They can only pay the debt if they grow, and they can only grow if they take on more debt. It’s a classic cash-flow problem that won’t be resolved with the current business model.

4. Moving factories to cheaper labor pools. Factories along the coast are moving inland, or to other Asian countries, or to Africa.

5. Focusing on the domestic market. Many companies see Chinese customers as their only hope for survival. Expect the Chinese government to come under extreme internal political pressure to put up fences to protect these firms from foreign competition.

6. Taking the profits and getting out. Millions—literally, millions—of Chinese business owners are trying to pull cash out of their businesses and move them to the Unites States, Canada, or Europe. They are concerned that a Chinese government in need might not respect their ownership of property, so they are transferring these assets to nations with laws that allow stronger property rights.

Two other factors in America are helping this trend. First, in case you hadn’t noticed, America has debts it cannot likely pay back. Debts that cannot be paid are resolved by a transfer of collateral assets. Properties are for sale. Second, older Americans who hold assets are motivated to sell as they reach retirement, and few young Americans have the ability to buy. (As an American, I don’t think this trend is all bad. It’s a solution to a problem.)

The Chinese government has laws that limit outbound asset transfers, but citizens are routinely finding ways around those laws. Their need to earn a return on these invest-ments is only a secondary consideration. The first consider-ation is capital protection.

Did I paint a bleak picture for Chinese business? Don’t get me wrong. Despite these challenges, China is still strong in manufacturing. I believe in the future that China will be even stronger. But the future will belong to a new set of winners who have a business philosophy that is very different from the “low-cost labor” model that worked for 30 years.

I try to discourage American business owners from thinking of these trends as nationalist competition. Try to see strategic opportunities for partnership in these trends. The Chinese are generally quite patriotic, but they admire the U.S. and place a very high value on developing equal cross-border relation-ships. Global winners in the next generation will need those relationships and partnerships to capture market share here, there, and everywhere else.

Stay tuned for my next article on how I believe the best Chinese companies will get through this transition. (Hint: The winners will follow the American manufacturing playbook, refocusing on quality and productivity.)

Find out more about MJ McKay Strategic Consulting.

China Photos/Getty Images

PAGE : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 blogs.ptc.com

Global manufacturing is in transition. The advantage of Chinese manufacturers is slipping, and every day brings more news of another American manufacturer gaining (or recover-ing) a little piece of market share.

As both a college lecturer and strategic adviser to firms on both sides of the water, I’ve watched this process unfold for several years. And while we hear a lot about the Chinese economy from an American perspective, we don’t hear much about China from the Chinese point of view.

The truth is, the Chinese are becoming quietly desperate. They know that they are no longer the low-cost place to manufac-ture, but they don’t know what to do about it.

Many of these companies built their entire business model around cheap labor. Now that advantage is gone. Most Chinese business owners realize that they need to radically change their thinking about concepts of quality and productivi-ty. But meanwhile they are suffering serious cash flow prob-lems, and the shakeout is going to be very noticeable.

The response of typical Chinese manufacturers to this new climate is very similar to the response of many American manufacturers in the 1980’s, with similar results.

Here are the commonalities that I am seeing, none of which really make the Chinese manufacturer stronger:

1. Denial. They blame current difficulties on external challeng-es, not on their own outdated business models.

2. Frustration with employees. Chinese business owners are unhappy with their workers. In the past, workers would accept low wages and long hours without complaint. Now, workers demand high wages and will quit if they don’t like the job. The managers don’t understand how to manage without being autocrats, and that doesn’t play well with the younger generation.

3. Frustration with bankers. Chinese banks for many years did whatever was necessary to maintain the growth. Now the easy loans are gone, and factories are saddled with debt. They can only pay the debt if they grow, and they can only grow if they take on more debt. It’s a classic cash-flow problem that won’t be resolved with the current business model.

4. Moving factories to cheaper labor pools. Factories along the coast are moving inland, or to other Asian countries, or to Africa.

PRODUCT LIFECYCLE STORIESINSIGHT ON PRODUCTS, MANUFACTURING, AND SERVICE

Fall 2013 – China’s Angst: When Low-Cost Manufacturing Dies

5. Focusing on the domestic market. Many companies see Chinese customers as their only hope for survival. Expect the Chinese government to come under extreme internal political pressure to put up fences to protect these firms from foreign competition.

6. Taking the profits and getting out. Millions—literally, millions—of Chinese business owners are trying to pull cash out of their businesses and move them to the Unites States, Canada, or Europe. They are concerned that a Chinese government in need might not respect their ownership of property, so they are transferring these assets to nations with laws that allow stronger property rights.

Two other factors in America are helping this trend. First, in case you hadn’t noticed, America has debts it cannot likely pay back. Debts that cannot be paid are resolved by a transfer of collateral assets. Properties are for sale. Second, older Americans who hold assets are motivated to sell as they reach retirement, and few young Americans have the ability to buy. (As an American, I don’t think this trend is all bad. It’s a solution to a problem.)

The Chinese government has laws that limit outbound asset transfers, but citizens are routinely finding ways around those laws. Their need to earn a return on these invest-ments is only a secondary consideration. The first consider-ation is capital protection.

Did I paint a bleak picture for Chinese business? Don’t get me wrong. Despite these challenges, China is still strong in manufacturing. I believe in the future that China will be even stronger. But the future will belong to a new set of winners who have a business philosophy that is very different from the “low-cost labor” model that worked for 30 years.

I try to discourage American business owners from thinking of these trends as nationalist competition. Try to see strategic opportunities for partnership in these trends. The Chinese are generally quite patriotic, but they admire the U.S. and place a very high value on developing equal cross-border relation-ships. Global winners in the next generation will need those relationships and partnerships to capture market share here, there, and everywhere else.

Stay tuned for my next article on how I believe the best Chinese companies will get through this transition. (Hint: The winners will follow the American manufacturing playbook, refocusing on quality and productivity.)

Find out more about MJ McKay Strategic Consulting.

Kim Steele/Getty Images

PAGE : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 blogs.ptc.com

By Maria K. Regan

PRODUCT LIFECYCLE STORIESINSIGHT ON PRODUCTS, MANUFACTURING, AND SERVICE

Fall 2013 – 4 Ways to Boost Workplace Innovation

4 Ways to Boost Workplace Innovation

Innovation isn’t the purview of lone geniuses being struck, lightening style, by inspiration out of the blue. Rather it comes from creative, intelligent people who routinely encounter different perspectives and are frequently exposed to new concepts. As Steven Johnson writes in his book Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, “Chance favors the connected mind.”

Based on that principal, here are four expert tips to help stimulate innovation in the workplace:

1. Connect Thinkers. One way to encourage creative solutions is to engage thinkers with different skill sets from across your organization. Steven Gold, Senior Partner for Entrepre-neurship at Babson College, directs the college’s Summer Venture Program, which supports the most promising MBA and undergraduate entrepreneurs from Babson and other nearby colleges.

“We have 24 entrepreneurs working on different businesses in the same space,” Gold says. “Every day, sharing goes on—from contacts and ideas to emotional support. It’s the best part of the program.” To encourage that sharing in a busy environ-ment, the workspace includes a centrally located whiteboard on which anyone can write a question, describe a roadblock, or

request a resource. Others passing by take note of what’s posted, mull it over, and provide responses when they can.

Google has used the same technique. In a blog post titled “The Eight Pillars of Innovation,” Susan Wojcicki, Senior Vice President for Ads and Commerce, describes how the company hung an “ideas board” on a wall in a well-traveled hallway.

“On a Friday night,” she writes, “an engineer went to the board and wrote down the details of a convoluted problem we had with our ads system. A group of Googlers lacking exciting plans for the evening began rewriting the algorithm within hours and had solved the problem by Tuesday. The best ideas at Google are sparked just like that – when small groups of Googlers take a break on a random afternoon and start talking about things that excite them.”

2. Rethink Workplace Design. David Silverman is a principal at Silverman Trykowski Associates (STA), an architecture and design firm headquartered in Boston’s Innovation District. STA works with a wide range of businesses, from major universi-ties and global marketing agencies to start-up nonprofits. The company specializes in design that addresses key factors like productivity, efficiency, morale, and enterprise success.

Silverman has found that providing a variety of meeting spaces that can be tailored to the task at hand encourages workplace innovation. “Ideally,” he says, “you want break-out collaborative space where teams can brainstorm, as well as private confer-ence rooms in different sizes.”

Even when space is limited, it’s possible to offer common areas that support a variety of uses and preferences. For example, at STA they removed a large desk in an unused reception area to turn it into a lounge with casual, movable seating, a flatscreen, and a whiteboard.

“It’s not a conference room – a place where you have to close the door,” Silverman says. Instead, he calls the space a living lab and a public thinking area. The seating can be arranged in different ways, and the white board is on wheels so it can be repositioned easily. “Adaptability is the key,” he says. “The area can be used for structured presentations or casual group discussions. People seem to relax more in this space, which is good for creativity.”

3. Invite Fresh Perspectives. Organizing forums and inviting speakers are other ways to bring employees into frequent contact with fresh perspectives and rekindle mental energy.

“We’ll host speaker events and town hall meetings where we invite people to think about a problem and potential solutions,” says Sam Aquillano, co-founder and executive director of Design Museum Boston, an organization that works to connect professionals in different industries through the common theme of design. At one town hall meeting in Boston’s Innova-tion District, attendees developed the idea of a public-bench design competition that ultimately drew 172 entries from 23 countries. It also generated an inspiring interactive exhibit that provided benches for a developing waterfront park.

Whenever possible, Aquillano stages events in high visibility locations, such as building lobbies and cafeterias. “To make our events highly accessible, we put them in places where people already are,” he says. “Providing morning coffee or other refreshments helps, too.”

4. Bring Entrepreneurs In-House. A creative option for companies with unused office space is to rent that space out to

start-up companies and non-profits. Both the Los Angeles Times and The Boston Globe have utilized this tactic as their down-sized staffs require less space.

Furnished casually and surrounded by working journalists, the Globe’s spare office space has been rented to high-tech start-ups and used to host a programming-code marathon. In an interview with The New York Times, Globe’s publisher Christopher Mayer said that in addition to allowing the company to fully utilize an asset, the new relationships have helped to energize the workplace and connect the paper to the community.

“Putting people together who think differently is a very fun, valuable experience,” says Babson’s Gold. “Being exposed to other perspectives is refreshing for all of us.”

In another of his books, The Ghost Map, Steven Johnson likens innovation to what happens in a flood plain: “A dozen separate tributaries converge, and the rising waters lift the genius high enough that he or she can see around the conceptual obstruc-tions of the age.”

PAGE : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 blogs.ptc.com

Innovation isn’t the purview of lone geniuses being struck, lightening style, by inspiration out of the blue. Rather it comes from creative, intelligent people who routinely encounter different perspectives and are frequently exposed to new concepts. As Steven Johnson writes in his book Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, “Chance favors the connected mind.”

Based on that principal, here are four expert tips to help stimulate innovation in the workplace:

1. Connect Thinkers. One way to encourage creative solutions is to engage thinkers with different skill sets from across your organization. Steven Gold, Senior Partner for Entrepre-neurship at Babson College, directs the college’s Summer Venture Program, which supports the most promising MBA and undergraduate entrepreneurs from Babson and other nearby colleges.

“We have 24 entrepreneurs working on different businesses in the same space,” Gold says. “Every day, sharing goes on—from contacts and ideas to emotional support. It’s the best part of the program.” To encourage that sharing in a busy environ-ment, the workspace includes a centrally located whiteboard on which anyone can write a question, describe a roadblock, or

request a resource. Others passing by take note of what’s posted, mull it over, and provide responses when they can.

Google has used the same technique. In a blog post titled “The Eight Pillars of Innovation,” Susan Wojcicki, Senior Vice President for Ads and Commerce, describes how the company hung an “ideas board” on a wall in a well-traveled hallway.

“On a Friday night,” she writes, “an engineer went to the board and wrote down the details of a convoluted problem we had with our ads system. A group of Googlers lacking exciting plans for the evening began rewriting the algorithm within hours and had solved the problem by Tuesday. The best ideas at Google are sparked just like that – when small groups of Googlers take a break on a random afternoon and start talking about things that excite them.”

2. Rethink Workplace Design. David Silverman is a principal at Silverman Trykowski Associates (STA), an architecture and design firm headquartered in Boston’s Innovation District. STA works with a wide range of businesses, from major universi-ties and global marketing agencies to start-up nonprofits. The company specializes in design that addresses key factors like productivity, efficiency, morale, and enterprise success.

PRODUCT LIFECYCLE STORIESINSIGHT ON PRODUCTS, MANUFACTURING, AND SERVICE

Fall 2013 – 4 Ways to Boost Workplace Innovation

Silverman has found that providing a variety of meeting spaces that can be tailored to the task at hand encourages workplace innovation. “Ideally,” he says, “you want break-out collaborative space where teams can brainstorm, as well as private confer-ence rooms in different sizes.”

Even when space is limited, it’s possible to offer common areas that support a variety of uses and preferences. For example, at STA they removed a large desk in an unused reception area to turn it into a lounge with casual, movable seating, a flatscreen, and a whiteboard.

“It’s not a conference room – a place where you have to close the door,” Silverman says. Instead, he calls the space a living lab and a public thinking area. The seating can be arranged in different ways, and the white board is on wheels so it can be repositioned easily. “Adaptability is the key,” he says. “The area can be used for structured presentations or casual group discussions. People seem to relax more in this space, which is good for creativity.”

3. Invite Fresh Perspectives. Organizing forums and inviting speakers are other ways to bring employees into frequent contact with fresh perspectives and rekindle mental energy.

“We’ll host speaker events and town hall meetings where we invite people to think about a problem and potential solutions,” says Sam Aquillano, co-founder and executive director of Design Museum Boston, an organization that works to connect professionals in different industries through the common theme of design. At one town hall meeting in Boston’s Innova-tion District, attendees developed the idea of a public-bench design competition that ultimately drew 172 entries from 23 countries. It also generated an inspiring interactive exhibit that provided benches for a developing waterfront park.

Whenever possible, Aquillano stages events in high visibility locations, such as building lobbies and cafeterias. “To make our events highly accessible, we put them in places where people already are,” he says. “Providing morning coffee or other refreshments helps, too.”

4. Bring Entrepreneurs In-House. A creative option for companies with unused office space is to rent that space out to

start-up companies and non-profits. Both the Los Angeles Times and The Boston Globe have utilized this tactic as their down-sized staffs require less space.

Furnished casually and surrounded by working journalists, the Globe’s spare office space has been rented to high-tech start-ups and used to host a programming-code marathon. In an interview with The New York Times, Globe’s publisher Christopher Mayer said that in addition to allowing the company to fully utilize an asset, the new relationships have helped to energize the workplace and connect the paper to the community.

“Putting people together who think differently is a very fun, valuable experience,” says Babson’s Gold. “Being exposed to other perspectives is refreshing for all of us.”

In another of his books, The Ghost Map, Steven Johnson likens innovation to what happens in a flood plain: “A dozen separate tributaries converge, and the rising waters lift the genius high enough that he or she can see around the conceptual obstruc-tions of the age.”

PAGE : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 blogs.ptc.com

By Maria K. Regan

PRODUCT LIFECYCLE STORIESINSIGHT ON PRODUCTS, MANUFACTURING, AND SERVICE

Fall 2013 – US Sailing Brings Science and Engineering to Kids

US Sailing Brings Science and Engineering to Kids

“All sailing is really about science and math,” says John O’Flaherty, executive director of Community Boating Center in Providence, RI.

“You’re immersed in it, whether you realize it or not.” To capitalize on that connection, the boating center teamed up with Providence After School Alliance to tie what kids experience on the water to what they’re doing in science and math at school.

Together, they developed a summer program for middle-school students that involved two days in the class-room and two days on the water. “We added a very under-toned dash of science to the sailing,” O’Flaherty says. “The next day in class, the teacher used the on-water experi-ence as a springboard for discussion of the science behind it.”

Teachers found that students were much more interested in learning about science when they had a stake in it. “There’s a certain magic to sailing,” O’Flaherty says. “If you learn the lessons, you get to harness these invisible forces—wind, currents, tides—and use them to go fast, which is fun and exciting.”

Hull shape, sail size, tillers, and pulleys created opportunities

to include physics, math, and engineering into the learning experience, as well as wind, weather, and waterway science.

The summer program was so well received that O’Flaherty asked US Sailing to help develop a formal curriculum. US Sailing was enthusiastic. They hired Jessica Servis, an experi-enced sailor and a teacher with a master’s in education, to be program manager for what came to be called REACH.

“Sailing is like sticking kids in a real-life interactive lab every day,” Servis says. “Everyone knew it had a great STEM connec-tion, but there was no curriculum that spoke to teachers and schools, met education frameworks, and could be implement-ed by a community-sailing center.”

After three years of development, REACH launched in June 2012 with 10 modules, each built on inquiry-based learning and engineering-by-design principles. The goal: to provide hands-on integrated learning opportunities that inspire interest in physics, marine biology, robotics, technology, and more.

To actively involve students, each lesson takes an investigative approach and is built around answering questions such as: How does this boat float? What shape are sails and why? How does marine debris get in our waters and where does it go?

Why does the wind change as the day progresses?

Katie Schlotterbeck, a middle-school science teacher at St. Michael Lutheran, a National Blue Ribbon School in Fort Myers, Florida, was part of the five-site pilot REACH program. “The curriculum is very flexible,” she says. “It’s also easy to teach. You don’t have to make the topics exciting – they’re already exciting for students.”

Schlotterbeck likes that the modules are inquiry based. “Too many times, students are given a set of directions to follow,” she says. “I like to say, ‘here’s the question, now how can you solve it?’ They’ll draw, test, and come back to the drawing board until they get their answer. We need to teach students how to solve problems, not just how to follow directions.”

For each REACH module there are in-classroom and on-water activities that teach the same concepts. “Our philosophy is to let experts do what they do best,” says Servis. “Let sailing schools get kids on the water and do those parts of the lesson, and have teachers do pre-teaching, follow-up activities, and post-discussion of what was learned on the water.”

Sailing and STEM are being connected on a more informal basis, too. During the recent America’s Cup racing in San Francisco, the connection was leveraged by sailors from the American Youth Sailing Force, a team that competed in the youth version of the America’s Cup, held concurrently.

“We wanted to use our position, our team, and the excitement of the America’s Cup to show kids how the math and science they learn in school are applied in real life,” says 22-year-old Ian Andrewes, Force team member and manager.

The Force worked with schools and sailing programs in the Bay Area. “Getting kids out sailing is the most important thing,” Andrewes says. “As a sailor, part of your job is to understand things like rigging load and structural dynamics. You end up dealing with a bit of everything. Basically, we wanted to help kids realize what’s available to them if they’re just willing to step outside their comfort zone.”

The REACH program and others like it continue to grow in popularity. In its first year, more than 70 schools, sailing

centers, and youth programs purchased the REACH curricu-lum (REACH Educator Guide $59.95). Fifteen of those groups are already using REACH for ongoing programming.

“REACH empowers kids to control their own learning environ-ment and encourages them to ask questions, then come up with answers,” O’Flaherty says.

“For most kids, it’s the first time someone has trusted them with something as expensive as a sailboat and let them be the captain. When they realize they’re in control of it with nothing but simple machinery, it’s a real eye-opener. You see the smiles come out the first day we get kids in the boats.”

US Sailing

PAGE : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 blogs.ptc.com

“All sailing is really about science and math,” says John O’Flaherty, executive director of Community Boating Center in Providence, RI.

“You’re immersed in it, whether you realize it or not.” To capitalize on that connection, the boating center teamed up with Providence After School Alliance to tie what kids experience on the water to what they’re doing in science and math at school.

Together, they developed a summer program for middle-school students that involved two days in the class-room and two days on the water. “We added a very under-toned dash of science to the sailing,” O’Flaherty says. “The next day in class, the teacher used the on-water experi-ence as a springboard for discussion of the science behind it.”

Teachers found that students were much more interested in learning about science when they had a stake in it. “There’s a certain magic to sailing,” O’Flaherty says. “If you learn the lessons, you get to harness these invisible forces—wind, currents, tides—and use them to go fast, which is fun and exciting.”

Hull shape, sail size, tillers, and pulleys created opportunities

to include physics, math, and engineering into the learning experience, as well as wind, weather, and waterway science.

The summer program was so well received that O’Flaherty asked US Sailing to help develop a formal curriculum. US Sailing was enthusiastic. They hired Jessica Servis, an experi-enced sailor and a teacher with a master’s in education, to be program manager for what came to be called REACH.

“Sailing is like sticking kids in a real-life interactive lab every day,” Servis says. “Everyone knew it had a great STEM connec-tion, but there was no curriculum that spoke to teachers and schools, met education frameworks, and could be implement-ed by a community-sailing center.”

After three years of development, REACH launched in June 2012 with 10 modules, each built on inquiry-based learning and engineering-by-design principles. The goal: to provide hands-on integrated learning opportunities that inspire interest in physics, marine biology, robotics, technology, and more.

To actively involve students, each lesson takes an investigative approach and is built around answering questions such as: How does this boat float? What shape are sails and why? How does marine debris get in our waters and where does it go?

PRODUCT LIFECYCLE STORIESINSIGHT ON PRODUCTS, MANUFACTURING, AND SERVICE

Fall 2013 – US Sailing Brings Science and Engineering to Kids

Why does the wind change as the day progresses?

Katie Schlotterbeck, a middle-school science teacher at St. Michael Lutheran, a National Blue Ribbon School in Fort Myers, Florida, was part of the five-site pilot REACH program. “The curriculum is very flexible,” she says. “It’s also easy to teach. You don’t have to make the topics exciting – they’re already exciting for students.”

Schlotterbeck likes that the modules are inquiry based. “Too many times, students are given a set of directions to follow,” she says. “I like to say, ‘here’s the question, now how can you solve it?’ They’ll draw, test, and come back to the drawing board until they get their answer. We need to teach students how to solve problems, not just how to follow directions.”

For each REACH module there are in-classroom and on-water activities that teach the same concepts. “Our philosophy is to let experts do what they do best,” says Servis. “Let sailing schools get kids on the water and do those parts of the lesson, and have teachers do pre-teaching, follow-up activities, and post-discussion of what was learned on the water.”

Sailing and STEM are being connected on a more informal basis, too. During the recent America’s Cup racing in San Francisco, the connection was leveraged by sailors from the American Youth Sailing Force, a team that competed in the youth version of the America’s Cup, held concurrently.

“We wanted to use our position, our team, and the excitement of the America’s Cup to show kids how the math and science they learn in school are applied in real life,” says 22-year-old Ian Andrewes, Force team member and manager.

The Force worked with schools and sailing programs in the Bay Area. “Getting kids out sailing is the most important thing,” Andrewes says. “As a sailor, part of your job is to understand things like rigging load and structural dynamics. You end up dealing with a bit of everything. Basically, we wanted to help kids realize what’s available to them if they’re just willing to step outside their comfort zone.”

The REACH program and others like it continue to grow in popularity. In its first year, more than 70 schools, sailing

centers, and youth programs purchased the REACH curricu-lum (REACH Educator Guide $59.95). Fifteen of those groups are already using REACH for ongoing programming.

“REACH empowers kids to control their own learning environ-ment and encourages them to ask questions, then come up with answers,” O’Flaherty says.

“For most kids, it’s the first time someone has trusted them with something as expensive as a sailboat and let them be the captain. When they realize they’re in control of it with nothing but simple machinery, it’s a real eye-opener. You see the smiles come out the first day we get kids in the boats.”

SeaAffinity, Inc.

PAGE : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 blogs.ptc.com

By Mark McKay

PRODUCT LIFECYCLE STORIESINSIGHT ON PRODUCTS, MANUFACTURING, AND SERVICE

Fall 2013 – China Looks to U.S. for New Manufacturing Model

China Looks to U.S. for New Manufacturing Model

Chinese manufacturers are facing hard times. Debt is up, sales are down. Signs of relief are followed by signs of trouble.

Last week, I wrote about the responses and solutions that most Chinese business owners are employing. These solutions will be ineffective, and they will be the analgesic prescription for most. The result will be a slow fade into competitive irrelevance.

There will be a few savvy manufacturers though, that rise above the crisis and embrace a new Chinese business model. These survivors will find new strategies that make them healthy, name-brand global players.

A few Chinese manufacturers are beginning to study the response of many American manufacturers to a similar crisis in the 1980’s. Modern China opened for business in the year 1980. Hundreds of thousands of American businesses were directly affected by China’s competition. What was the response of these American firms? Some of them just died. Some moved for the cheaper labor. Some looked for help from the American government, trying to build a fence around their customers.

Many of those companies just don’t exist anymore. But the smartest—the best firms you do business with today—dug deep

and discovered the open secret of modern manufacturing: Labor costs are not a driver of manufacturing competitiveness.

The real driver in manufacturing is the cost tied to material flow. Quality and efficiency are measured by the materials, not the worker’s experience. Wasted time around materials is more damaging than wasted labor time. Labor is still a factor, but it is only decisive when two firms are roughly equal in the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of managing the costs tied to material flow.

In 1980, American companies were lousy in this regard, and they should have known it, because that is why so many of them were losing to Japanese competition. When the enor-mous labor pool in China opened up, Chinese factories (with low-paid workers and poor material flow) were facing off against American factories (with high-paid workers and poor material flow.) Suddenly, everything was “made in China.”

In America, of course, many tried ineffective strategies, but a few learned to adapt. These are the companies that the smart Chinese business owner wants to study. The winning strate-gies in many cases were a combination of concepts studied from those aforementioned Japanese companies. American companies learned that:

1. Material flow and cash flow are closely related.

2. A focus on material flow creates a natural requirement to treat quality as a number one priority.

3. Management and labor could cooperate with very similar objectives. It is no coincidence that the past 30 years have seen a decrease in the need for factory labor unions.

4. Rapid materials flow opens up the opportunity to satisfy niche markets.

Only a few Chinese manufacturers understand these secrets. Twenty years from now, those firms will be the survivors. Other Chinese manufacturers know that they are falling behind, but they usually think (incorrectly) that the American advantage is in replacing workers with automated machinery. Again, they just cannot get themselves away from thinking about labor cost. Automated machines can reduce labor, but they will only create an advantage when they first of all support a simplified material flow.

The Chinese who study these methods find the human element to be the most difficult to understand. The methods I describe cannot be successfully put into place just by repeat-ing some Japanese words and sketching out some diagrams. The attitude of managers needs to change.

To encourage cooperation between labor and management means that both parties agree to openly point out opportuni-ties for improvement, to act with humility, and to not focus on who should take blame for problems that are hard to solve. Mistakes are expected. Finding a mistake is celebrated, not suppressed, not denied.

These “soft” aspects of change are the most difficult for Americans, and they are even more difficult for Chinese—much, much more difficult.

The managers I’ve meet do understand this challenge, but they worry about the substantial cultural barriers to getting past it. In China, the concept of “gaining face” or “losing face” is extremely important. Criticisms are almost always taken personally, even criticisms that a Westerner would never think

were connected to an individual. Criticism in public therefore is not to be taken lightly. Mistakes are denied, to save face.

Nevertheless, the few will persevere. I foresee a new phase of both competitiveness and cooperation in business relations between Chinese and American firms. American and Chinese products will be very similar in cost, engineering, and quality. Smart strategists on both sides of the water will seek out a new kind of partnership, built on trust, leveraging access to brains, capital, and markets on both side of the water.

The new reality will come within a generation, I think in twenty years, but perhaps even within ten.

PAGE : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 blogs.ptc.com

Chinese manufacturers are facing hard times. Debt is up, sales are down. Signs of relief are followed by signs of trouble.

Last week, I wrote about the responses and solutions that most Chinese business owners are employing. These solutions will be ineffective, and they will be the analgesic prescription for most. The result will be a slow fade into competitive irrelevance.

There will be a few savvy manufacturers though, that rise above the crisis and embrace a new Chinese business model. These survivors will find new strategies that make them healthy, name-brand global players.

A few Chinese manufacturers are beginning to study the response of many American manufacturers to a similar crisis in the 1980’s. Modern China opened for business in the year 1980. Hundreds of thousands of American businesses were directly affected by China’s competition. What was the response of these American firms? Some of them just died. Some moved for the cheaper labor. Some looked for help from the American government, trying to build a fence around their customers.

Many of those companies just don’t exist anymore. But the smartest—the best firms you do business with today—dug deep

and discovered the open secret of modern manufacturing: Labor costs are not a driver of manufacturing competitiveness.

The real driver in manufacturing is the cost tied to material flow. Quality and efficiency are measured by the materials, not the worker’s experience. Wasted time around materials is more damaging than wasted labor time. Labor is still a factor, but it is only decisive when two firms are roughly equal in the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of managing the costs tied to material flow.

In 1980, American companies were lousy in this regard, and they should have known it, because that is why so many of them were losing to Japanese competition. When the enor-mous labor pool in China opened up, Chinese factories (with low-paid workers and poor material flow) were facing off against American factories (with high-paid workers and poor material flow.) Suddenly, everything was “made in China.”

In America, of course, many tried ineffective strategies, but a few learned to adapt. These are the companies that the smart Chinese business owner wants to study. The winning strate-gies in many cases were a combination of concepts studied from those aforementioned Japanese companies. American companies learned that:

PRODUCT LIFECYCLE STORIESINSIGHT ON PRODUCTS, MANUFACTURING, AND SERVICE

Fall 2013 – China Looks to U.S. for New Manufacturing Model

1. Material flow and cash flow are closely related.

2. A focus on material flow creates a natural requirement to treat quality as a number one priority.

3. Management and labor could cooperate with very similar objectives. It is no coincidence that the past 30 years have seen a decrease in the need for factory labor unions.

4. Rapid materials flow opens up the opportunity to satisfy niche markets.

Only a few Chinese manufacturers understand these secrets. Twenty years from now, those firms will be the survivors. Other Chinese manufacturers know that they are falling behind, but they usually think (incorrectly) that the American advantage is in replacing workers with automated machinery. Again, they just cannot get themselves away from thinking about labor cost. Automated machines can reduce labor, but they will only create an advantage when they first of all support a simplified material flow.

The Chinese who study these methods find the human element to be the most difficult to understand. The methods I describe cannot be successfully put into place just by repeat-ing some Japanese words and sketching out some diagrams. The attitude of managers needs to change.

To encourage cooperation between labor and management means that both parties agree to openly point out opportuni-ties for improvement, to act with humility, and to not focus on who should take blame for problems that are hard to solve. Mistakes are expected. Finding a mistake is celebrated, not suppressed, not denied.

These “soft” aspects of change are the most difficult for Americans, and they are even more difficult for Chinese—much, much more difficult.

The managers I’ve meet do understand this challenge, but they worry about the substantial cultural barriers to getting past it. In China, the concept of “gaining face” or “losing face” is extremely important. Criticisms are almost always taken personally, even criticisms that a Westerner would never think

were connected to an individual. Criticism in public therefore is not to be taken lightly. Mistakes are denied, to save face.

Nevertheless, the few will persevere. I foresee a new phase of both competitiveness and cooperation in business relations between Chinese and American firms. American and Chinese products will be very similar in cost, engineering, and quality. Smart strategists on both sides of the water will seek out a new kind of partnership, built on trust, leveraging access to brains, capital, and markets on both side of the water.

The new reality will come within a generation, I think in twenty years, but perhaps even within ten.

Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images

PAGE : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 blogs.ptc.com

By Nancy Langmeyer

PRODUCT LIFECYCLE STORIESINSIGHT ON PRODUCTS, MANUFACTURING, AND SERVICE

Fall 2013 – Tough-to-Design Soft Robots

Tough-to-Design Soft Robots Challenge Engineers to Think Differently

Someday soon, your life may be saved by a weird-looking octopus, squid, or caterpillar – a squishy, form-changing, animal-like device that’s actually a soft robot.

Scientists are exploring the fluidity and deformable nature of animals like those mentioned above, as well as insects, starfish, and lizards. Their goal is to combine the maneuver-ability of these creatures with the autonomous nature of the hard-shelled robots we’re all familiar with—think R2-D2.

The ability of soft robots to climb onto textured surfaces and irregular shapes, crawl along wires and ropes, and burrow into complex, confined spaces will take them to places the hard robots of today can’t venture. In the biomedical field, they could assist in surgeries: while in search and rescue missions; they could crawl into hazardous situations to aid victims.

While a life-saving soft robot may not be a reality for several years, teams from various disciplines—computer science, organic chemistry, biomechanics, biomimetic robotics, flexible electronics, mechanical engineering, and materials develop-ment—are all making advances. Contributions to this field are also being made by neuroscience, polymer chemistry, control systems, and biomedical engineering.

Two groups at the forefront of this research are located in the Boston area. At Tufts University, professor Barry Trimmer heads one of the first groups to explore soft animal neurome-chanics and how soft structures can be controlled through electrical motors.

At Harvard, a team of researchers led by professor George Whitesides, has developed a soft, silicone-based robot that looks much like an octopus. With a focus more on chemistry, the Whitesides Research Group is exploring elastomers, such as silicon polymer, and how the use of pneumatics—inflation and pressure—can change the shape of soft robots and power them.

According to Trimmer, soft robotics requires a new perspective for engineers. Typically, engineering theory deals with stiff materials and engineers have been trained to make sure what they build—whether it’s a bridge or a car—has minimal deformity under normal activity.

Soft materials, because they can change shape, are often considered to be problems that needs solving. “Soft material engineering is not taught much, and the engineering world needs to catch up fast,” Trimmer says. “Rarely are engineers encouraged to think about how they can build out of complete-ly different materials.

“This would give them access to a whole new world of capabil-ities. Think of the proteins and sugars found in human bodies. These are amazing materials with fantastic properties that have never been used or exploited,” Trimmer says.

While this type of study won’t supersede current engineering, it will be an important part of the design of structures in the future. The promised applications are, however, some way off.

“There are still huge issues that need to be addressed,” Trimmer notes, “particularly in terms of developing a good framework and tools to support our theoretical approach.”

One area that needs to be advanced is soft material simulation tools. There is no means yet to build or model a device in a computer and simulate how it’s going to work as engineers do currently with structures such as aircraft.

Another challenge is the electronics that power the soft robots. “A rotary electric motor won’t work because it’s built of stiff materials and will limit the capability of a soft robot,” Trimmer says.

The Harvard team is using pressurized gas or liquid to power their robots, but it still has to use pumps and values and other equipment to drive the pressure. Trimmer’s group is exploring micro-coil shaped memory alloy wire, which can pull great force when current is passed through it. Trimmer and his team are also looking for a solution that is more like muscle, with electrically active polymers. The group is also using stem cells to grow muscles for their research.

The final major challenge is the control of movement of the robots. “Currently, engineering theory around controlling movement is for rigid systems,” Trimmer says. “This fails miserably when applied to deformable structures.”

Trimmer believes that advances in this area will come from computer science, morphological computation, and artificial intelligence as scientists explore the use of the material properties of structures to achieve control.

“Instead of having everything centralized in a computer, you actually use the body itself to accomplish many of the

complicated tasks of control, much like how animals work,” Trimmer says.

To advance the study of soft robotics, Trimmer argues, it’s essential for engineers in different disciplines to be open to ideas and approaches from other fields. “In engineering, there is a tendency to be siloed. The people who build hard robots know mechanical engineering and work with control engineers. Because they have different backgrounds, these engineers tend to bolt the control system onto the robot, rather than develop an integrated system,” he says.

“The different disciplines need to be willing to get out of their comfort zone and collaborate with people in unrelated fields—even beyond engineering, such as physics, chemistry, and biology.”

We may see soft robotic toys and other advances like simple manipulator arms and gripper systems within the next five years. But, says Trimmer, it most likely will be another decade before completely soft devices will be put into use in more complex fields such as medicine.

PAGE : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 blogs.ptc.com

Someday soon, your life may be saved by a weird-looking octopus, squid, or caterpillar – a squishy, form-changing, animal-like device that’s actually a soft robot.

Scientists are exploring the fluidity and deformable nature of animals like those mentioned above, as well as insects, starfish, and lizards. Their goal is to combine the maneuver-ability of these creatures with the autonomous nature of the hard-shelled robots we’re all familiar with—think R2-D2.

The ability of soft robots to climb onto textured surfaces and irregular shapes, crawl along wires and ropes, and burrow into complex, confined spaces will take them to places the hard robots of today can’t venture. In the biomedical field, they could assist in surgeries: while in search and rescue missions; they could crawl into hazardous situations to aid victims.

While a life-saving soft robot may not be a reality for several years, teams from various disciplines—computer science, organic chemistry, biomechanics, biomimetic robotics, flexible electronics, mechanical engineering, and materials develop-ment—are all making advances. Contributions to this field are also being made by neuroscience, polymer chemistry, control systems, and biomedical engineering.

Two groups at the forefront of this research are located in the Boston area. At Tufts University, professor Barry Trimmer heads one of the first groups to explore soft animal neurome-chanics and how soft structures can be controlled through electrical motors.

At Harvard, a team of researchers led by professor George Whitesides, has developed a soft, silicone-based robot that looks much like an octopus. With a focus more on chemistry, the Whitesides Research Group is exploring elastomers, such as silicon polymer, and how the use of pneumatics—inflation and pressure—can change the shape of soft robots and power them.

According to Trimmer, soft robotics requires a new perspective for engineers. Typically, engineering theory deals with stiff materials and engineers have been trained to make sure what they build—whether it’s a bridge or a car—has minimal deformity under normal activity.

Soft materials, because they can change shape, are often considered to be problems that needs solving. “Soft material engineering is not taught much, and the engineering world needs to catch up fast,” Trimmer says. “Rarely are engineers encouraged to think about how they can build out of complete-ly different materials.

PRODUCT LIFECYCLE STORIESINSIGHT ON PRODUCTS, MANUFACTURING, AND SERVICE

Fall 2013 – Tough-to-Design Soft Robots

“This would give them access to a whole new world of capabil-ities. Think of the proteins and sugars found in human bodies. These are amazing materials with fantastic properties that have never been used or exploited,” Trimmer says.

While this type of study won’t supersede current engineering, it will be an important part of the design of structures in the future. The promised applications are, however, some way off.

“There are still huge issues that need to be addressed,” Trimmer notes, “particularly in terms of developing a good framework and tools to support our theoretical approach.”

One area that needs to be advanced is soft material simulation tools. There is no means yet to build or model a device in a computer and simulate how it’s going to work as engineers do currently with structures such as aircraft.

Another challenge is the electronics that power the soft robots. “A rotary electric motor won’t work because it’s built of stiff materials and will limit the capability of a soft robot,” Trimmer says.

The Harvard team is using pressurized gas or liquid to power their robots, but it still has to use pumps and values and other equipment to drive the pressure. Trimmer’s group is exploring micro-coil shaped memory alloy wire, which can pull great force when current is passed through it. Trimmer and his team are also looking for a solution that is more like muscle, with electrically active polymers. The group is also using stem cells to grow muscles for their research.

The final major challenge is the control of movement of the robots. “Currently, engineering theory around controlling movement is for rigid systems,” Trimmer says. “This fails miserably when applied to deformable structures.”

Trimmer believes that advances in this area will come from computer science, morphological computation, and artificial intelligence as scientists explore the use of the material properties of structures to achieve control.

“Instead of having everything centralized in a computer, you actually use the body itself to accomplish many of the

complicated tasks of control, much like how animals work,” Trimmer says.

To advance the study of soft robotics, Trimmer argues, it’s essential for engineers in different disciplines to be open to ideas and approaches from other fields. “In engineering, there is a tendency to be siloed. The people who build hard robots know mechanical engineering and work with control engineers. Because they have different backgrounds, these engineers tend to bolt the control system onto the robot, rather than develop an integrated system,” he says.

“The different disciplines need to be willing to get out of their comfort zone and collaborate with people in unrelated fields—even beyond engineering, such as physics, chemistry, and biology.”

We may see soft robotic toys and other advances like simple manipulator arms and gripper systems within the next five years. But, says Trimmer, it most likely will be another decade before completely soft devices will be put into use in more complex fields such as medicine.

Tufts University

PAGE : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 blogs.ptc.com

By Maria Doyle

PRODUCT LIFECYCLE STORIESINSIGHT ON PRODUCTS, MANUFACTURING, AND SERVICE

Fall 2013 – Google Glass Allows Surgeons to Multitask

Google Glass Allows Surgeons to Multitask

Philips Healthcare and Accenture are developing a new way to help surgeons deliver more efficient and effective patient care using Google Glass technology.

Google Glass is wearable technology that looks like eyeglass-es, but without the lenses. Instead, a small prism on the right side displays information via a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connection to the MyGlass app on Android or iOS devices.

Google Glass was rolled out to early adopters this year, and the company is encouraging these users to share innovative ways they use the product. Software developers are also writing new applications for Glass in a variety of fields.

Researchers from the Philips Digital Accelerator Lab, a newly formed unit tasked with rapid prototyping of new solutions, have collaborated with their colleagues from Accenture Technology Labs to explore the potential uses of Google Glass in clinical settings.

They are looking at how Google Glass can be used during surgical procedures to allow doctors to access information quickly and easily. Google Glass can connect to Philips IntelliVue Solutions to deliver the seamless transfer of a

patient’s vital signs into Google Glass, for hands-free, voice controlled access to critical data.

Anthony (Tony) Jones, M.D., is the vice president and chief marketing officer for patient care and clinical informatics at Philips Healthcare. He explains, “The most exciting potential application of Google Glass in healthcare is the ability to allow providers to ‘virtually’ be in two places at once, which will have a significant impact on workflow and patient care.”

For instance, imagine a doctor or nurse is with a patient and he or she is doing a basic procedure that requires both hands. An alarm or alert is triggered in another room.

“Rather than interrupting the current procedure, the provider can use the verbal commands to call up the patient monitoring data that’s triggering the alert," Jones explains. “At that point, the provider can decide whether the alarm can wait or wheth-er it needs immediate action.”

Similarly, bringing some of the basic vital signs info from the monitor directly into the field of vision via Google Glass allows the provider to do the procedure and view the feedback data without taking their eyes off of the patient.

“It sounds simple, but small workflow improvements like this can reduce errors and have a significant impact on patient care,” Jones says.

Brent Blum, wearable display practice lead at Accenture Technology Labs, adds, “With the proliferation of wearable devices comes a number of really exciting use cases for surgeons, anesthesiologists, first responders, ER staff, and any other healthcare professional that could benefit from access to information in a hands-free way.

“Beyond healthcare, we’re exploring the impact of wearable devices on a number of other industries to help demonstrate what’s possible with this emerging technology in terms of making a mobile, hands-free workforce more productive and efficient,” Blum says.

Google Glass’ video feature was used in an actual surgery this past June when a surgeon base in Madrid used the technology to stream video of a surgery in real-time over the internet to other doctors watching in the United States. Other doctors have used the Google Glass video feature as a training tool, to allow others to see the same view they do when performing a surgery.

As with many new technologies in the healthcare industry, concerns about patient privacy and information security have been raised, but since this application is still in its infancy there should be time to iron out these issues.

Jones concludes, “Philips was inspired by the potential of exploring Google Glass in a clinical setting. Within two weeks, the [Philips and Accenture] team was able to take a mobile Android app and install it on the Glass platform.

“We’re particularly proud of the fact that our team went beyond the original challenge of mocking up a solution and actually delivered a working demonstration. We’ve been working on extending many of our applications to smart-phones and tablets. We’re very excited about the opportunity to port these apps to Google Glass and work with our customers to discover novel solutions using the platform.”

Google Glass won’t be released to the consumer market until sometime next year, although the initial Explorer version of

Google Glass sold for $1,500, the retail version is expected to be priced about the same as a new smartphone – in the $300 to $400 range.

This infographic by MHADegree.org gives additional information on how Google Glass could revolutionize the medical industry.

How do you envision Google Glass being used in the health-care industry, or other industries?

Philips Healthcare

PAGE : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 blogs.ptc.com

Philips Healthcare and Accenture are developing a new way to help surgeons deliver more efficient and effective patient care using Google Glass technology.

Google Glass is wearable technology that looks like eyeglass-es, but without the lenses. Instead, a small prism on the right side displays information via a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connection to the MyGlass app on Android or iOS devices.

Google Glass was rolled out to early adopters this year, and the company is encouraging these users to share innovative ways they use the product. Software developers are also writing new applications for Glass in a variety of fields.

Researchers from the Philips Digital Accelerator Lab, a newly formed unit tasked with rapid prototyping of new solutions, have collaborated with their colleagues from Accenture Technology Labs to explore the potential uses of Google Glass in clinical settings.

They are looking at how Google Glass can be used during surgical procedures to allow doctors to access information quickly and easily. Google Glass can connect to Philips IntelliVue Solutions to deliver the seamless transfer of a

patient’s vital signs into Google Glass, for hands-free, voice controlled access to critical data.

Anthony (Tony) Jones, M.D., is the vice president and chief marketing officer for patient care and clinical informatics at Philips Healthcare. He explains, “The most exciting potential application of Google Glass in healthcare is the ability to allow providers to ‘virtually’ be in two places at once, which will have a significant impact on workflow and patient care.”

For instance, imagine a doctor or nurse is with a patient and he or she is doing a basic procedure that requires both hands. An alarm or alert is triggered in another room.

“Rather than interrupting the current procedure, the provider can use the verbal commands to call up the patient monitoring data that’s triggering the alert," Jones explains. “At that point, the provider can decide whether the alarm can wait or wheth-er it needs immediate action.”

Similarly, bringing some of the basic vital signs info from the monitor directly into the field of vision via Google Glass allows the provider to do the procedure and view the feedback data without taking their eyes off of the patient.

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Fall 2013 – Google Glass Allows Surgeons to Multitask

“It sounds simple, but small workflow improvements like this can reduce errors and have a significant impact on patient care,” Jones says.

Brent Blum, wearable display practice lead at Accenture Technology Labs, adds, “With the proliferation of wearable devices comes a number of really exciting use cases for surgeons, anesthesiologists, first responders, ER staff, and any other healthcare professional that could benefit from access to information in a hands-free way.

“Beyond healthcare, we’re exploring the impact of wearable devices on a number of other industries to help demonstrate what’s possible with this emerging technology in terms of making a mobile, hands-free workforce more productive and efficient,” Blum says.

Google Glass’ video feature was used in an actual surgery this past June when a surgeon base in Madrid used the technology to stream video of a surgery in real-time over the internet to other doctors watching in the United States. Other doctors have used the Google Glass video feature as a training tool, to allow others to see the same view they do when performing a surgery.

As with many new technologies in the healthcare industry, concerns about patient privacy and information security have been raised, but since this application is still in its infancy there should be time to iron out these issues.

Jones concludes, “Philips was inspired by the potential of exploring Google Glass in a clinical setting. Within two weeks, the [Philips and Accenture] team was able to take a mobile Android app and install it on the Glass platform.

“We’re particularly proud of the fact that our team went beyond the original challenge of mocking up a solution and actually delivered a working demonstration. We’ve been working on extending many of our applications to smart-phones and tablets. We’re very excited about the opportunity to port these apps to Google Glass and work with our customers to discover novel solutions using the platform.”

Google Glass won’t be released to the consumer market until sometime next year, although the initial Explorer version of

Google Glass sold for $1,500, the retail version is expected to be priced about the same as a new smartphone – in the $300 to $400 range.

This infographic by MHADegree.org gives additional information on how Google Glass could revolutionize the medical industry.

How do you envision Google Glass being used in the health-care industry, or other industries?

Google Glass

PAGE : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 blogs.ptc.com

By Jon Marcus

PRODUCT LIFECYCLE STORIESINSIGHT ON PRODUCTS, MANUFACTURING, AND SERVICE

Fall 2013 – Vending Machines Dispense Bicycle Helmets

Vending Machines Dispense Bicycle Helmets in Boston

A green solution to traffic congestion and carbon emissions, bike-sharing programs have become ubiquitous in crowded cities worldwide, letting users check out bicycles from kiosks to commute, ride across town, or sightsee.

But even as it’s helping solve one problem, bike-sharing has created another: It’s put bicycle riders on city streets without figuring out a way to loan them helmets.

That’s created legal and promotional problems in cities like Vancouver, where provincial laws require cyclists to wear helmets; a requirement that’s delayed the bike-share program for years. In Melbourne and Brisbane, Australia, which also require helmets by law, the bike-share programs were so underused that the government offered 200 helmets to riders for free to boost business.

Trouble is, creating a vending machine to dispense and retrieve bicycle helmets has proven a significant technological trial.

“It’s a very difficult challenge because of the shape and bulk of helmets,” says Andy Clarke, president of the League of American Bicyclists advocacy group and a former city bicycle planner. “We’ve heard all kinds of stories about inflatable or foldable helmets. And the cleanliness issue is something that

comes up. Every bike-rental fleet in the country has to deal with this issue.”

Now there may be a solution. After two years of design work that started in a mechanical engineering class, a team of recent MIT grads has designed a bicycle helmet vending machine that will be launched this month in Boston.

The machines, dubbed HelmetHubs, will be attached to four of the city’s 108 Hubway bike-share stations where records show riders are least likely to wear helmets. Another 10 are sched-uled to be installed over the next few months. Each machine can hold 36 unisize helmets with adjustable straps, and a 24-hour rental will cost about $2 on a credit card.

The toughest obstacle for the designers was figuring out a way for users to return the helmets. An open receptacle on a city street, they feared, might attract trash. So they put RFID, or radio-frequency identification chips in loaner helmets, which activate a door on the machine.

The devices can’t sanitize the helmets; that would require a more significant power source than it uses to run the credit-card reader. So, once they’ve been returned, the helmets will be picked up and brought to a warehouse to be

cleaned. But the engineers hope that future incarnations of the machines will disinfect the helmets automatically.

The long slog from problem to solution started when Boston’s bicycle coordinator appealed to an MIT mechanical-engineer-ing class two years ago to prototype a helmet dispenser.

It was a thankless assignment.

“There were a lot of conversations about how the hell are we going to do this,” says one of the students, Breanna Berry.

But they took it on anyway.

“The challenge was one of the things that attracted us to it. Helmets are really awkward. They’re an awkward shape. So the dispensing and the return were hard to figure out. And how do you get a lot of helmets in a small space?”

After they came up with their proposal, satisfying their academic obligation, Berry and a classmate, Chris Mills—an ardent cyclist—decided to keep working on it when they graduated last year.

“A couple of us thought, ‘Maybe we should keep going with this,’” Berry says. “It was very apparent that this wasn’t a bad business model to get involved in, and that bike-sharing was growing worldwide.”

There are 535 bike-sharing programs worldwide, according to the Earth Policy Institute, collectively loaning out an estimated half-million bicycles. That’s twice as many as when Mills and Berry began to work on the vending-machine problem.

Yet fewer than one in five people who use bike-share bikes wear helmets, compared to more than half of those who own their own bicycles, according to researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. And cyclists who don’t wear helmets are as much as 88 percent more likely to suffer head injuries in crashes than those who do. In Boston, half the cyclists in crashes to which paramedics have had to be called weren’t wearing helmets.

After graduation, Mills and Berry moved to a startup accelera-tor lab; neither drew a salary, and Berry worked in a restau-rant to pay the bills. Eventually, they found investors and a manufacturer—Big Belly Solar, which makes solar-powered public trash compactors.

Each of their helmet dispensers costs $10,000, and there’s been interest from companies that supply bike-share bikes and cities that are pushing them. That’s an enormous world-wide market. And there are potential uses at ski resorts and elsewhere.

“It’s an intriguing project,” says Clarke, the cycling advocate. “And it’s a fascinating design and engineering issue.”

Hubway

PAGE : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 blogs.ptc.com

A green solution to traffic congestion and carbon emissions, bike-sharing programs have become ubiquitous in crowded cities worldwide, letting users check out bicycles from kiosks to commute, ride across town, or sightsee.

But even as it’s helping solve one problem, bike-sharing has created another: It’s put bicycle riders on city streets without figuring out a way to loan them helmets.

That’s created legal and promotional problems in cities like Vancouver, where provincial laws require cyclists to wear helmets; a requirement that’s delayed the bike-share program for years. In Melbourne and Brisbane, Australia, which also require helmets by law, the bike-share programs were so underused that the government offered 200 helmets to riders for free to boost business.

Trouble is, creating a vending machine to dispense and retrieve bicycle helmets has proven a significant technological trial.

“It’s a very difficult challenge because of the shape and bulk of helmets,” says Andy Clarke, president of the League of American Bicyclists advocacy group and a former city bicycle planner. “We’ve heard all kinds of stories about inflatable or foldable helmets. And the cleanliness issue is something that

comes up. Every bike-rental fleet in the country has to deal with this issue.”

Now there may be a solution. After two years of design work that started in a mechanical engineering class, a team of recent MIT grads has designed a bicycle helmet vending machine that will be launched this month in Boston.

The machines, dubbed HelmetHubs, will be attached to four of the city’s 108 Hubway bike-share stations where records show riders are least likely to wear helmets. Another 10 are sched-uled to be installed over the next few months. Each machine can hold 36 unisize helmets with adjustable straps, and a 24-hour rental will cost about $2 on a credit card.

The toughest obstacle for the designers was figuring out a way for users to return the helmets. An open receptacle on a city street, they feared, might attract trash. So they put RFID, or radio-frequency identification chips in loaner helmets, which activate a door on the machine.

The devices can’t sanitize the helmets; that would require a more significant power source than it uses to run the credit-card reader. So, once they’ve been returned, the helmets will be picked up and brought to a warehouse to be

PRODUCT LIFECYCLE STORIESINSIGHT ON PRODUCTS, MANUFACTURING, AND SERVICE

Fall 2013 – Vending Machines Dispense Bicycle Helmets

cleaned. But the engineers hope that future incarnations of the machines will disinfect the helmets automatically.

The long slog from problem to solution started when Boston’s bicycle coordinator appealed to an MIT mechanical-engineer-ing class two years ago to prototype a helmet dispenser.

It was a thankless assignment.

“There were a lot of conversations about how the hell are we going to do this,” says one of the students, Breanna Berry.

But they took it on anyway.

“The challenge was one of the things that attracted us to it. Helmets are really awkward. They’re an awkward shape. So the dispensing and the return were hard to figure out. And how do you get a lot of helmets in a small space?”

After they came up with their proposal, satisfying their academic obligation, Berry and a classmate, Chris Mills—an ardent cyclist—decided to keep working on it when they graduated last year.

“A couple of us thought, ‘Maybe we should keep going with this,’” Berry says. “It was very apparent that this wasn’t a bad business model to get involved in, and that bike-sharing was growing worldwide.”

There are 535 bike-sharing programs worldwide, according to the Earth Policy Institute, collectively loaning out an estimated half-million bicycles. That’s twice as many as when Mills and Berry began to work on the vending-machine problem.

Yet fewer than one in five people who use bike-share bikes wear helmets, compared to more than half of those who own their own bicycles, according to researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. And cyclists who don’t wear helmets are as much as 88 percent more likely to suffer head injuries in crashes than those who do. In Boston, half the cyclists in crashes to which paramedics have had to be called weren’t wearing helmets.

After graduation, Mills and Berry moved to a startup accelera-tor lab; neither drew a salary, and Berry worked in a restau-rant to pay the bills. Eventually, they found investors and a manufacturer—Big Belly Solar, which makes solar-powered public trash compactors.

Each of their helmet dispensers costs $10,000, and there’s been interest from companies that supply bike-share bikes and cities that are pushing them. That’s an enormous world-wide market. And there are potential uses at ski resorts and elsewhere.

“It’s an intriguing project,” says Clarke, the cycling advocate. “And it’s a fascinating design and engineering issue.”

HelmetHub

PAGE : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 blogs.ptc.com

By Maria Doyle

PRODUCT LIFECYCLE STORIESINSIGHT ON PRODUCTS, MANUFACTURING, AND SERVICE

Fall 2013 – Can Crowdfunding Boost Engineering?

Can Crowdfunding Boost Engineering and Design Innovation?

Crowdfunding—already well established in our lexicon—is the way to raise capital for hip new projects. From 3D doodlers to flying cars, it’s disrupting the way enterprises, entrepre-neurs, non-profits, and individuals raise capital – enabling large numbers of individuals to fund a project or company, with each backer contributing a small percentage of the total investment.

The fundamental idea behind crowdfunding is anyone can set up a new product or project and invite others to help fund it within a specific time frame. Each project has a funding goal and contributors can kick in as little as a few dollars to thousands. Typically, supporters will get a token gift or special status updates for their help.

There were over 500 active crowdfunding platforms in 2012, raising $2.7 billion dollars, according to crowdfunding site Go Get Funding, and that is set to increase to $5.1 billion by the end of this year.

According to IEEE, science and technology currently make up a very small percentage of the total number of crowdfunded projects, but as crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo become wildly successful and R&D budgets tighten, more engineers and industrial designers may join the trend.

KEM STUDIO funded its industrial design project SKATE BENCH No 1 on Kickstarter and raised over $17,000 to manufacture a bench which incorporates a custom skateboard deck atop a continuously bent stainless steel or powder coated frame. The design was a finalist in the 2012 IDEA awards.

GoldieBlox, a toy designed by engineer Debbie Sterling to get girls interested in engineering, also got its big break with Kickstarter. The project raised $150,000 in just four days, ultimately collecting $285,000. On the last day of the campaign, Sterling was contacted by Toys R Us, who will be featuring the new toy on their shelves.

In addition to Kickstarter, there are industry-specific crowd-funding platforms for science and technology, such as Fund-aGeek, TechMoola, RocketHub and the #SciFund Challenge. It’s likely, however, that these will consolidate and only the highest quality crowdfunding sites will thrive.

As crowdfunding grows in popularity, the business strategies surrounding it become more complex. Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (or JOBS Act), signed in April of 2012, includes a Crowdfund Act which will allow ordinary investors the opportunity to invest in small or early stage startups in exchange for company equity. (Currently, only individuals who

meet certain wealth or income requirements are allowed to invest in private companies in exchange for ownership.)

Pending the creation of SEC regulations expected later this year, new businesses will be able to make their own IPOs and enable small investors to act as venture capitalists. This would involve much larger sums than most of the crowdfunded projects today, and Kickstarter has already stated it will forego any type of equity-based crowdfunding due to the success of their current “gifts and perks” model.

By allowing equity investment, lawmakers expect to super-charge crowdfunding, and proponents believe this will give job creators access to more capital and will spur innovation across a wider range of companies and industries – including science, technology, and engineering. However, detractors feel that by allowing unaccredited investors to participate in online equity crowdfunding there is more opportunity to scam investors through fraudulent offerings.

Is crowdfunding a good idea for the engineering community? Share your thoughts and experiences about crowdfunding.

Witold Mielniczek

PAGE : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 blogs.ptc.com

Crowdfunding—already well established in our lexicon—is the way to raise capital for hip new projects. From 3D doodlers to flying cars, it’s disrupting the way enterprises, entrepre-neurs, non-profits, and individuals raise capital – enabling large numbers of individuals to fund a project or company, with each backer contributing a small percentage of the total investment.

The fundamental idea behind crowdfunding is anyone can set up a new product or project and invite others to help fund it within a specific time frame. Each project has a funding goal and contributors can kick in as little as a few dollars to thousands. Typically, supporters will get a token gift or special status updates for their help.

There were over 500 active crowdfunding platforms in 2012, raising $2.7 billion dollars, according to crowdfunding site Go Get Funding, and that is set to increase to $5.1 billion by the end of this year.

According to IEEE, science and technology currently make up a very small percentage of the total number of crowdfunded projects, but as crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo become wildly successful and R&D budgets tighten, more engineers and industrial designers may join the trend.

KEM STUDIO funded its industrial design project SKATE BENCH No 1 on Kickstarter and raised over $17,000 to manufacture a bench which incorporates a custom skateboard deck atop a continuously bent stainless steel or powder coated frame. The design was a finalist in the 2012 IDEA awards.

GoldieBlox, a toy designed by engineer Debbie Sterling to get girls interested in engineering, also got its big break with Kickstarter. The project raised $150,000 in just four days, ultimately collecting $285,000. On the last day of the campaign, Sterling was contacted by Toys R Us, who will be featuring the new toy on their shelves.

In addition to Kickstarter, there are industry-specific crowd-funding platforms for science and technology, such as Fund-aGeek, TechMoola, RocketHub and the #SciFund Challenge. It’s likely, however, that these will consolidate and only the highest quality crowdfunding sites will thrive.

As crowdfunding grows in popularity, the business strategies surrounding it become more complex. Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (or JOBS Act), signed in April of 2012, includes a Crowdfund Act which will allow ordinary investors the opportunity to invest in small or early stage startups in exchange for company equity. (Currently, only individuals who

PRODUCT LIFECYCLE STORIESINSIGHT ON PRODUCTS, MANUFACTURING, AND SERVICE

Fall 2013 – Can Crowdfunding Boost Engineering?

meet certain wealth or income requirements are allowed to invest in private companies in exchange for ownership.)

Pending the creation of SEC regulations expected later this year, new businesses will be able to make their own IPOs and enable small investors to act as venture capitalists. This would involve much larger sums than most of the crowdfunded projects today, and Kickstarter has already stated it will forego any type of equity-based crowdfunding due to the success of their current “gifts and perks” model.

By allowing equity investment, lawmakers expect to super-charge crowdfunding, and proponents believe this will give job creators access to more capital and will spur innovation across a wider range of companies and industries – including science, technology, and engineering. However, detractors feel that by allowing unaccredited investors to participate in online equity crowdfunding there is more opportunity to scam investors through fraudulent offerings.

Is crowdfunding a good idea for the engineering community? Share your thoughts and experiences about crowdfunding.

Goldie Blox

PAGE : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 blogs.ptc.com

By Bill Bulkeley

PRODUCT LIFECYCLE STORIESINSIGHT ON PRODUCTS, MANUFACTURING, AND SERVICE

Fall 2013 – Using Smartphones to Diagnose Disease

Using Smartphones to Diagnose Disease

Engineers are taking advantage of the flexibility of apps and the computing power of smartphones to replicate the functions of medical devices and even laboratory instruments.

Smartphone based medical apps started to proliferate two years ago. Handy integrated devices like the $129 Withings blood pressure monitor simplified the process of tracking personal health. This year, the level of sophistication has taken a significant leap.

Take for instance the NetraG from Massachusetts-based EyeNetra. The company, which develops mobile diagnostic tools to aid eye-care, is working on manufacturing an effective diagnostic system using plastic lenses mounted on a smart-phone. By replacing autorefractors—the expensive medical devices optometrists use to prescribe glasses—EyeNetra says it can cut eye-care costs by thousands of dollars.

The device works by determining how accurately a person’s eyes focus on light. Placing the NetraG viewer against a smartphone screen displaying colored lines, the user spins a dial to align the sets of lines. The app calculates the inaccuracy in the person’s focus and prescribes corrective lenses. It can diagnose near-sightedness, far-sightedness, and astigmatism.

Eyenetra, which was started by Vitor Pamplona, a MIT gradu-ate student from Brazil, hopes to transform eye-care in the developing world by giving consumers cheap, easily adminis-tered eye exams.

In the United States, only optometrists can write prescriptions for vision correction. But in areas of the world with fewer regulations like India, which has 300 million people with impaired vision and relatively few optometrists, Eyenetra could make a big difference by providing affordable care.

Eyenetra is signing partnership agreements with various Indian eye-related enterprises, and last month it demonstrat-ed working models of its product at an MIT introductory session for freshmen.

Meanwhile, Scanadu, a California-based company, is connect-ing smartphone technology with EKG monitors, blood-pres-sure sensors, and thermometers to provide patients feedback on their vital signs. Scanadu’s $199 cookie-sized electronic puck can be pressed to the forehead to collect data that is then transmitted to a smartphone for analysis.

Walter de Brouwer, a Belgian engineer and founder of Scana-du, predicts that empowering patients with their own devices

to monitor their vital signs will transform healthcare.

“We have never had access to this kind of information before,” say de Brouwer, who hopes that sensing abnormalities in blood pressure, heart rate, and stress levels with the device will prompt patients to take corrective action before a heart attack or stroke occurs.

Scanadu has certainly attracted public attention. Using the crowdfunding site IndieGoGo, it raised $1.6 million last summer, a record at the time.

In the Midwest, University of Illinois researchers are using a smartphone camera and its processing power to perform sophisticated laboratory-equivalent tests for allergens, pathogens, and toxins in food or soil.

The device consists of an app and an attachment to the phone that the team calls a “cradle.” This wedge-shaped attachment that fits on the back of the phone contains optical components, lenses and filters, and a compartment where a sample is placed. It is positioned to allow the phone’s camera to measure the spectrum of light coming through the sample and into the camera, and provides a result in just a few minutes.

According to the University of Illinois team, the cradle provides a result as accurate as from a $50,000 lab spectrophotometer at a fraction of the cost, and it can easily be carried around for field tests.

“A lot of medical conditions might be monitored very inexpen-sively and non-invasively using mobile platforms like phones,” said Brian T. Cunningham, professor of bioengineering at University of Illinois, in a telephone interview.

The new device, which isn’t likely to be used for medical diagnostics in the U.S. because of regulatory challenges, has promising applications in developing countries where it could be used to test for iron or vitamin A deficiency in pregnant women, without the need of sending samples to a distant lab.

Cunningham says the device could also be used in veterinary medicine to test large animals without needing to send samples out to laboratories. Another use might be to test

racehorses for illegal painkillers at tracks. Environmental scientists could identify toxins and certain pollutants in soil and water samples.

With this technology, Cunningham says, “you can detect molecular things, like pathogens, disease biomarkers, or DNA, things that are currently only done in big diagnostic labs with lots of expense and large volumes of blood.”

Cunningham is currently negotiating with potential partners, and a prototype product might be ready within a year.

Withings

PAGE : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 blogs.ptc.com

Engineers are taking advantage of the flexibility of apps and the computing power of smartphones to replicate the functions of medical devices and even laboratory instruments.

Smartphone based medical apps started to proliferate two years ago. Handy integrated devices like the $129 Withings blood pressure monitor simplified the process of tracking personal health. This year, the level of sophistication has taken a significant leap.

Take for instance the NetraG from Massachusetts-based EyeNetra. The company, which develops mobile diagnostic tools to aid eye-care, is working on manufacturing an effective diagnostic system using plastic lenses mounted on a smart-phone. By replacing autorefractors—the expensive medical devices optometrists use to prescribe glasses—EyeNetra says it can cut eye-care costs by thousands of dollars.

The device works by determining how accurately a person’s eyes focus on light. Placing the NetraG viewer against a smartphone screen displaying colored lines, the user spins a dial to align the sets of lines. The app calculates the inaccuracy in the person’s focus and prescribes corrective lenses. It can diagnose near-sightedness, far-sightedness, and astigmatism.

Eyenetra, which was started by Vitor Pamplona, a MIT gradu-ate student from Brazil, hopes to transform eye-care in the developing world by giving consumers cheap, easily adminis-tered eye exams.

In the United States, only optometrists can write prescriptions for vision correction. But in areas of the world with fewer regulations like India, which has 300 million people with impaired vision and relatively few optometrists, Eyenetra could make a big difference by providing affordable care.

Eyenetra is signing partnership agreements with various Indian eye-related enterprises, and last month it demonstrat-ed working models of its product at an MIT introductory session for freshmen.

Meanwhile, Scanadu, a California-based company, is connect-ing smartphone technology with EKG monitors, blood-pres-sure sensors, and thermometers to provide patients feedback on their vital signs. Scanadu’s $199 cookie-sized electronic puck can be pressed to the forehead to collect data that is then transmitted to a smartphone for analysis.

Walter de Brouwer, a Belgian engineer and founder of Scana-du, predicts that empowering patients with their own devices

PRODUCT LIFECYCLE STORIESINSIGHT ON PRODUCTS, MANUFACTURING, AND SERVICE

Fall 2013 – Using Smartphones to Diagnose Disease

to monitor their vital signs will transform healthcare.

“We have never had access to this kind of information before,” say de Brouwer, who hopes that sensing abnormalities in blood pressure, heart rate, and stress levels with the device will prompt patients to take corrective action before a heart attack or stroke occurs.

Scanadu has certainly attracted public attention. Using the crowdfunding site IndieGoGo, it raised $1.6 million last summer, a record at the time.

In the Midwest, University of Illinois researchers are using a smartphone camera and its processing power to perform sophisticated laboratory-equivalent tests for allergens, pathogens, and toxins in food or soil.

The device consists of an app and an attachment to the phone that the team calls a “cradle.” This wedge-shaped attachment that fits on the back of the phone contains optical components, lenses and filters, and a compartment where a sample is placed. It is positioned to allow the phone’s camera to measure the spectrum of light coming through the sample and into the camera, and provides a result in just a few minutes.

According to the University of Illinois team, the cradle provides a result as accurate as from a $50,000 lab spectrophotometer at a fraction of the cost, and it can easily be carried around for field tests.

“A lot of medical conditions might be monitored very inexpen-sively and non-invasively using mobile platforms like phones,” said Brian T. Cunningham, professor of bioengineering at University of Illinois, in a telephone interview.

The new device, which isn’t likely to be used for medical diagnostics in the U.S. because of regulatory challenges, has promising applications in developing countries where it could be used to test for iron or vitamin A deficiency in pregnant women, without the need of sending samples to a distant lab.

Cunningham says the device could also be used in veterinary medicine to test large animals without needing to send samples out to laboratories. Another use might be to test

racehorses for illegal painkillers at tracks. Environmental scientists could identify toxins and certain pollutants in soil and water samples.

With this technology, Cunningham says, “you can detect molecular things, like pathogens, disease biomarkers, or DNA, things that are currently only done in big diagnostic labs with lots of expense and large volumes of blood.”

Cunningham is currently negotiating with potential partners, and a prototype product might be ready within a year.

Andrew Thomas Ryan, Tangible Media Group, MIT

PAGE : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 blogs.ptc.com

Fall 2013

© 2013, PTC Inc. (PTC). All rights reserved. Information described herein is furnished for informational use only, is subject to change without notice, and should not be construed as a guarantee, commitment, condition or offer by PTC. PTC, the PTC Logo, PTC Creo, PTC Mathcad, PTC Windchill, PTC Windchill PDMLink and all PTC product names and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of PTC and/or its subsidiaries in the United States and in other countries. All other product or company names are property of their respective owners. The timing of any product release, including any features or functionality, is subject to change at PTC’s discretion.

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