New Partnerships are being forged, merging textile expertise and advanced electronic systems. Our company has partnered with Textile Instruments LLC to bring to market a Nasa technology based on Langley Research Center’s SansEC sensing system. SansEC is an open-circuit, resonant sensor that needs no electrical connections.  SansEC , “without electrical connection”, bypasses challenges ( INSERT PIC )

This technology combines the SansEC circuit with a magnetic field reader to allow for detection of magnetic or electric field changes to produce a spectroscopy readout.  Sensor IQ measures changes to both the magnetic and electric fields and characterizes one or more of the properties in terms of permittivity permeability or conductivity. With the low weight, washable textile sensors we advanced to an era where sub systems can act remotely and provide us data like never before.  The advanced coupling effects allow for a greater detection to spatially locate surface and material anomalies.

The opportunity for collaboration derives from a Technology Transfer portfolio licensed to explore and measure changes in biometrics in humans and animals.   Together VOLT and TI are changing the way we think about sensors, and health and safety.  Look for new NASA sensor technology in products soon.

Bore hole sensing is one promising application of the technology.

This technology is a method of identifying material anomalies and defects on or within a material by observing and quantifying how a localized change in either conductivity, permeability or permittivity changes the responding electric field and magnetic fields. This approach has many advantages over typical spectroscopy methods, particularly because typical methods only measure changes in the electric field.

This advancement will allow for potentially deeper detection of a material’s abnormalities/defects (including subsurface measurements) with limited electrical requirements. The technology has applications as diverse as medical oncology screenings or surface measurements of aeronautic skins.

Another promising application is bore hole geological spectroscopy. In such an application, an array of sensors could be embedded into bore hole drills for exploratory deep wells. As the drill tooling slides past the bore hole wall, spectroscopic sampling of the side walls reveals important dielectric property information that is highly useful to prospectors and geologists in determining the probability of specific resources that may exist in the subterranean geology.