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Annual Harold W. Gegenheimer Lecture Series on Innovation

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https://hdl.handle.net/1853/70831
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    Robots to the rescue
    (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2010-12-02) Murphy, Robin Roberson
    Why doesn’t FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) or MSHA (Mine Safety and Health Administration) use those “Hurt Locker” robots or Department of Defense unmanned aerial vehicles? Is having the Terminator crawl toward you a Good Thing? Once snake/cockroach/fly robots are perfected, rescue robotics is solved, right? Or is it making the robots fully autonomous? How many robots do you need for a disaster like a building collapse: 10? 100? This talk will answer these questions and discuss other surprises in the nascent field of rescue robotics based on fifteen years of research experience with rescue robots supplemented by the insertion of ground, air, and sea robots for urban search and rescue (US&R) into eleven disasters, including the 9/11 World Trade Center disaster, Hurricanes Katrina and Charley, and the Crandall Canyon Utah mine collapse. Extensive video will be shown as the talk explores how robots can reduce deaths, accelerate damage assessment, and minimize economic downtime after a disaster.
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    Noise in Hospitals: Effects and Cures
    (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008-12-02) West, James E.
    Noise in hospitals is a significant problem that is generally getting worse, even in new construction. High noise levels in hospitals can potentially contribute to stress and burnout in hospital staff, reduced speed of patient wound healing, and there is legitimate concern that hospital noise can negatively affect speech communication and cause an increased number of medical errors. There are several interesting issues that impact hospital noise. Since 1960, there has been a clear trend for rising hospital noise levels. The situation has been worsening steadily. Also, none of the published results show compliance with established standards for hospital noise. For example, the World Health Organization suggests different noise levels during daytime and nighttime that are commensurate with health promotion. In addition, there is remarkably little variation throughout the world for noise levels in different types of hospitals, from major research facilities to smaller community hospitals. This suggests that the problem of hospital noise is universal, and that noise control techniques might also be expected to be applied broadly. Conventional acoustical treatments are used sparingly in hospitals because it is believed that sound absorbing materials with pores harbor bacteria. Instead, smooth, hard, flat surfaces are used because they are easy to clean. Consequently, these surfaces are acoustically reflective and serve to aggravate existing noise problems. Any acoustical treatments in hospitals not only face great noise abatement challenges, but must also meet the most stringent hygienic standards. At Johns Hopkins University Hospital, we are collaborating with industry to develop new materials.
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    Development of the Boeing 787: Customers, Composites, and Collaboraton
    (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2006-12-06) Jenks, Mark D.
    Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner represents not only a breakthrough in aerospace structures technology with its firstever composite fuselage and wing, it also represents a major advance in large- scale global collaboration. The development process began with the Sonic Cruiser, a radically new concept for increasing the speed of large commercial jet transports. Early on, it was recognized that the same basic suite of technologies that enabled higher speed at acceptable cost, could also provide vastly superior operating economics (through lighter weight and lower maintenance costs) with today’s Mach .85 performance. After an exhaustive process working with the world’s major airlines, Boeing selected efficiency over speed and the 7E7 (later renamed the 787 Dreamliner) was born. The formal development process began with the program launch in 2003 and recently has moved into initial production with the fabrication of the first major structures for airplane #1 at seven major production sites around the world (Alenia, Kawasaki, Fuji, Mitsubishi, Spirit, Vought and Boeing) and the start of major assembly of the wing at FHI’s Handa plant outside of Nagoya, Japan. The initial full-scale structural tests of the wing have been completed, the first fuselage sections are in production at four major sites around the world, and the first massive composite wing skins have been produced by MHI in their new facility in Nagoya. The other breakthrough developed during this period was the creation of a whole new business model for global collaboration. Along with an advanced suite of design and collaboration tools developed with Daussault Systems, Boeing assembled a network of the world’s leading aerospace firms to participate in the early configuration development process and take primary responsibility for the detail design and manufacture of large integrated volumes of the airplane. This diverse base of highly integrated partnerships has lead to vastly improved efficiencies through technology sharing as well as leveraging the differences in company and national cultures and their varied approaches to problem solving. In the end, the true competitive advantage stems not from any individual technology, but rather from the combined ability to integrate intimate customer knowledge, to identify and develop the highest leverage technologies from around the world and to effectively marshal the diverse strengths of the global aerospace industry.