NASA Lunabotics Challenge

Nearly fifty University Teams recently gathered in Florida for the NASA Lunabotics Challenge. The robots are tasked with driving, digging, and depositing regolith—the fragmented rock material that covers the moon’s surface—in a lunar simulant. Beyond robotics and mechatronics, the program teaches team work, project management and industry collaboration.

Application Note: Ethernet Protocols for Industrial Automation Sensors

Industrial Ethernet protocols are playing a growing role in automation, as they offer a number of advantages over traditional fieldbus protocols such as CANopen and PROFIBUS. Industrial Ethernet protocols are based on standard Ethernet technology, which provides a number of benefits, including:

Expanded VLP Encoder Series Offers Control Engineers New Sensing Options

Everight Position is pleased to announce the addition of four new sizes of Netzer’s two-plate VLP rotary encoder amongst other improvements. Based on the success of the VLP-60 and VLP-100, the new options include the VLP-80, VLP-140, VLP-170 and VLP-247.

Inductosyn: End of an Era, New Opportunities or Both?

Recently, obtaining the Inductosyn and components for maintenance has become more difficult. For decades the Inductosyn from Farrand Controls / Ruhle Companies sat near the top of the rotary sensor hierarchy. Providing sub 2 arcsec (0.5 mdeg) accuracies, it combined the robustness of a resolver with the performance of the best optical encoders. Despite its shortcomings, it found plenty of customers, from airborne infrared and radar systems, to telescopes, satellite communication antennae (SATCOM), machine tooling and low-pressure vacuum chambers.