Digital AX

As a kid, electrical engineer Dan Sullivan mastered the guitar. His teenage sons, however, prefer mastering videogames. With a realistic instrument, Sullivan thought, all the time devoted to games like Rock Band could produce impressive musical proficiency. "You can show off playing guitar when you're my age," says Sullivan, now 58. "Being able to beat level 17 isn't going to stay with you."
Seven years ago, Sullivan left his cushy CTO job at a video-advertising company to develop JamStik, a digital six-string guitar. The compact neck has frets and strings like a real guitar but requires no tuning and doesn't rely on push buttons like many digital models. Instead, small sensors embedded in the fret board track fingers illuminated by 52 infrared LEDs.
Because the sensors are spaced just a fraction of an inch apart, firmware interpolates the data to filter overlapping signals and determine the precise placement of each finger. They can also trace the bending of a note for a bluesy tone or quivering fingertips for a dramatic vibrato. An onboard microprocessor converts the raw data into standardized musical instructions (MIDI), which a wireless antenna beams to a synced iPad or laptop.
With a half-inch range of sensitivity above the fret board, the sensors detect fingertips before they touch a string. This enables companion software, such as JamTutor for the iPad, to map hand positions in real time so that players can correct themselves. JamStik also works with more than 100 Wi-Fi–enabled apps, including Garage Band. Sullivan hopes the instrument, slated to reach stores by the end of 2013, will do for the guitar what keyboards did for the piano. "Our hope is to help introduce a new generation to the pleasure of creating music," Sullivan says, "rather than just being passive consumers of it."

JamStik

Sam Kaplan

INVENTOR
Dan Sullivan
COMPANY
Zivix
INVENTION
JamStik
COST TO DEVELOP
$1 million
MATURITY
9/10

Robotic Performer

Brian Roe spent nearly a decade building animatronic monsters for films such as Virus, A.I., and Scooby Doo 2. Then, almost overnight, Hollywood abandoned mechanical characters for computer renderings. Roe now works as a technology consultant, but with the surge of cheap, user-friendly microelectronics, he saw a market emerging for hobbyist robots. "It used to be that electronics and software were out of reach," Roe says. "Over the past six or eight years, it has completely switched." So Roe began developing a low-cost kit to teach anyone robotics. He calls his work-in-progress Roy the Robot.
For now, Roy is a head, neck, and pair of lower arms. Yet, with about 1,200 parts controlled by animatronics software, the robot already looks and moves like a human. Roe laser-cut the robot's frame from pliable, lightweight wood to retain complex architecture while keeping costs low. Twenty-eight inexpensive servomotors help Roy gesture with his hands; move his wrist, neck, and jaw; and even blink his eyes.
To complete Roy's upper arms and shoulders, Roe launched a successful crowdfunding campaign and sent backers DIY kits based on the hands and arms. He eventually hopes to sell the kits for about $300. That would fill a need for inexpensive manipulators. "The cheapest capable robotic arms are in the $20,000 range," says Siddhartha Srinivasa, a roboticist at Carnegie Mellon University.
Roe estimates that a full robot kit with a torso and legs might cost $3,000, and he hopes to one day imbue Roy with enough artificial intelligence to learn human motion. "But my main goal is to help people build, program, and understand robotics," Roe says. "Because, in the end, we're going to live in a robotic society."

Deft Digits

Six servomotors lend Roy the Robot's laser-cut wood hands a wide range of motion similar to that of human hands.

Sam Kaplan; Inset: Courtesy Matt Pacini

INVENTOR
Brian Roe
COMPANY
Roemtion

INVENTION
Roy The Robot
COST TO DEVELOP
$9,000
MATURITY
4/10

Suborbital Safeguard

During NASA's 2007 Astronaut Glove Challenge, costume fabricator Ted Southern met fellow competitor Nikolay Moiseev, a Russian space-suit builder. Although each walked away from the competition empty-handed, they formed a productive friendship. Two years later, they entered a glove they built together and won $100,000.
Southern and Moiseev are now building the third generation of a complete space suit, called 3G, in hopes of capturing a piece of the suborbital spaceflight industry—valued at $1.6 billion over the next decade. As companies such as Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, XCOR, and Blue Origin prepare to launch tourists toward the edge of space, Southern says the dangers of the environment have opened up a new market. "It's almost a full vacuum up there," he says.
At about $200,000 each, modern space suits can cost more than the suborbital ticket itself. And most use an inflatable inner bladder and a durable outer restraint layer—a two-layer design that makes them heavy, bulky, and inflexible. Yet "comfort is a big requirement for suborbital flights. These are people paying a lot of money out of pocket," says Jonathan Clark, a space medicine consultant at Baylor College of Medicine.
In 2009, Southern and Moiseev began developing a single-layer space suit that they hope to sell for about $50,000. The designers build it by fusing together pieces of urethane-coated nylon—a durable, airtight, and pliable material. When inflated, carefully positioned seams and metal braces help a wearer maintain flexibility, and internal tubing circulates air for cooling. Ports on the front allow for custom life-support attachments.
The NASA certification process, crucial for any new suit, isn't cheap, so last year Southern and Moiseev sought crowdfunding. The $27,000 they earned has them 90 percent of the way to a finished prototype, and the duo has already begun testing key components for flight certification. The industry has taken note. "We recently had a visit from former astronaut Garrett Reisman," a crew safety specialist for SpaceX, says Southern. "He saw a pressurized [second-generation] suit and was pretty impressed."

Fit For Space

The metal neck ring of the second-generation (2G) space suit proved uncomfortable for a wearer while lying down, so Southern [right] and Moiseev [left] plan to integrate a helmet with a flip-up visor into the 3G suit.

Sam Kaplan

INVENTORS
Ted Southern, Nikolay Moiseev
COMPANY
Final Forntier Design

INVENTION
Third Generation (3G) Suit
COST TO DEVELOP
$300,000
MATURITY
6/10

Hot Savings

Semitruck drivers idle their engines to heat or cool their vehicles' cabs—a practice that burns a billion gallons of fuel each year. Small engines on the back of a cab, called auxiliary power units (APUs), get the job done with less fuel, but they're loud and smelly. A team of five Ontario-based engineers and mechanics has devised what may be a better solution: an APU called HYPER that runs on waste heat.
The group originally formed to build a 100mpg car for the 2008 X Prize competition. During one brainstorming session, someone wondered aloud: Why not use energy from a vehicle's exhaust to run an HVAC system? "We did a lot of modeling and realized that the energy numbers made sense," says team member Jack MacDonnell. He and two others decided to work full-time to develop a new kind of APU.
Like a household refrigerator yet a third the size, HYPER chills air by depressurizing a liquid refrigerant under high pressure into a gas—a process that absorbs energy. The gas then condenses to start the cycle anew. But instead of using electricity to drive the process, HYPER does it with a semitruck's 660°F exhaust heat. MacDonnell says the APU stores between six and 10 hours of heating or cooling capacity after an hour of driving. Based on early tests, he thinks the device could cut a trucker's yearly fuel consumption by 9 percent and carbon emissions by about 20 tons.
The team is testing HYPER on a retrofitted semi in hopes of selling road-ready devices in 2014. With 2.5 million trucks on U.S. roads, HYPER could make a significant impact—but the team also hopes to retrofit buses, RVs, passenger vehicles, and more. "We would drastically cut emissions, fuel consumption, and be less dependent on foreign oil," MacDonnell says.

HYPER Diagram

Graham Murdoch

HOW IT WORKS

1) 660°F semitruck exhaust heats a refrigerant mixture [red] flowing through an exchanger. The refrigerant's solvent boils from its solute, pressurizing the HYPER system.
2) A second exchanger uses a fan to help cool and condense the refrigerant into a high-pressure liquid.
3) The refrigerant [yellow] passes through a nozzle, flashing it into a gas [blue]. This draws heat from an adjacent fluid loop, cooling it to about 23°F [green].
4) A reservoir stores the chilled fluid.
5) Air blown across an evaporator (fed by chilled reservoir fluid) cools the truck cab.
6) A final exchanger condenses the refrigerant into a liquid to restart the cycle.
INVENTORS
Jack MacDonnell, Dave Gibbs, John Stannard
COMPANY
ENTER MOTION

INVENTION
HYPER APU
COST TO DEVELOP
$800,000
MATURITY
6/10

Ultra-Green Headphones Contain 60 Percent Repurposed Material

Every year, we globally throw out up to 44 million tons of electronic garbage. Only a small fraction of it gets recycled, leaving landfills full of heavy metals, such as lead and mercury, that can bleed into the ground. To help slow the pileup—and inspire other companies to do the same Urbanears, a Swedish headphones maker, is trying something new. Instead of tossing large stocks of unsold headphones, the company disassembles them and uses the ear cups, headbands, and hinges to create the Re:Plattan headphones. Each pair has brand-new guts, contains about 60 percent repurposed material, and, because the components vary in color, has its own unique look.
After the initial, limited run of 3,000 Re:Plattans, designers will have to wait for a new supply of parts or find an untapped source. While the company plans to experiment with other material streams, it's also toying with the idea of a true recycling program, in which consumers can donate old headphones to the cause.

Urbanears Re:Plattan

Frequency range: 20hz–20khz
Repurposed parts: 60 percent
Price:$80 

KINESIS FREESTYLE SOLO ERGONOMIC USB KEYBOARD

Product description
Sleek low profile: minimal height effectively creates negative slope and reduces extension. Narrow foot print for comfortable mousing and keying. Separate and adjustable left/right keying modules. Low-force key switches. Embedded 10-key. Familiar key layout provides for minimal adaptation time. Ergonomic Split Keyboard Short Cut – Hot Keys

IHOME APP-ENHANCED DUAL ALARM STEREO CLOCK RADIO DOCKING STATION WITH REMOTE

Product description
The iD45 is a dual alarm clock radio for iPad, iPhone and iPod that lets you charge your iPad, iPhone or iPod and lets you wake and sleep to either one, to a custom playlist, or to FM radio. The auto sync feature syncs the clock to your iPhone (which is always current via cell phone towers) to set the time quickly. The iD45 allows you to set two separate alarms with different times on different days with our 7-5-2 feature. The iD45 also includes 6 FM presets, EQ controls and 3D sound and Reson8 sound technology for an exceptional audio experience. Wake to iPad/iPhone/iPod, playlists, FM radio or buzzer Works with iHome Sleep and iHome Radio apps Plays and charges iPad, iPhone and docking iPod models Bass, Treble, 3D and Balance controls Remote control included