Currents of Innovation

Biological cells are energetically efficient, multifunctional, miniaturized systems made of biodegradable, self-repairing, and soft materials. Cells have adaptive behaviors and can be assembled to form tissue with custom designs. If seen with the eyes of an engineer, cells are exceptional ingredients for scalable, sustainable, intelligent technologies. They already enable dynamical machines, termed bio-hybrid robots, the new frontier of soft robotics which moves thanks to the controllable, motile response of living tissue. While current bio-hybrid robots can bend, swim, crawl, and walk in response to electrical or optical signals, future research will embody intelligence in these organic machines for real-world applicability.

Real-time simulation can be used to test and validate the control equipment even for next-generation power converters based on SiC and GaN. Due to the high switching frequencies and short time constants of converters with wide bandgap devices, real-time simu- lators must capture the gate drive signals with sampling intervals of a few nanoseconds and use special numerical techniques to detect current zero crossings with high accuracy in time.