Page 9 - ME Newsletter Spring

innovative faculty innovative faculty
Our faculty have a long history of inventions and patents that changed the world, from the black box to cryopreservation. Here are a few of them.
RAJESH RAJAMANI | Innotronics
Success in the industrial sensor market requires three things: accuracy, durability, and cost-effectiveness. Rajesh Rajamani’s novel sensor technology meets all three requirements, and then some.
Rajamani, who holds the Benjamin Y.H. Liu —
TSI Applied Technology Chair, develops sensor
technology to make machines smarter. He has
designed sensors for cars and bicycles to detect
imminent collisions, and now, his startup company
Innotronics uses that same sensor technology to
detect the position of actuators that help machines
move. Actuators are present in most machines,
and their role is initiating movement: for example,
when you press the gas pedal in your car, a sensor
communicates with an actuator that makes the
vehicle move forward. Typically, this is done by a “contact sensor,” which must be physically touching the piston on an actuator, leading to wear and tear. Rajamani’s invention is a non-contact sensor that doesn’t have moving parts, making it more reliable and durable, and therefore more cost-effective.
The Innotronics sensor was recently licensed by Fortune 500 company Parker Hannifin, which sold over
11,600 sensors to boat manufacturer Mastercraft in 2022. The sensor allows for greater precision, consistency, and control of the wave height and shape behind a boat, giving consumers easily customizable waves to enjoy.
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