Bacterial microflows
Research activity in areas related to bacterial motility has gained a great interest in the last few years. Several important advances in the field have been made. Among them, one of the most important are the ones related to bacterial transport in the propagation of pathogen infections. Some works about bacterial motility are aimed at the construction of devices capable of sorting and classifying bacteria without the need of complex external devices to direct their movement. These devices are, perhaps the first step in the construction of biosensors or devices to perform biological essays.
Micofluidics is a multidisciplinary field with great perspectives of application in microbiology, sensors and actuators. Physics in the microfluidic world is characterized by surface tension effects and a very low Reynolds number, which causes the presence of laminar flows.
Download the poster presented at the 2011 Cuban Physical Society Symposium, my diploma thesis or the slideshow to find out more.
Software defined radio receiver
A Software defined radio (SDR) is a radio communication system where the signal processing is done in the digital domain unlike conventional radios; which are based in a series of analog filter, mixer, modulator and demodulator circuits. This type of systems are very attractive because they can be extremely flexible. For instance, the diversity of standards and regulations in cellular networks around the world carries with it many incompatibilities. An architecture based on SDR will allow future cellphones to switch the signal processing scheme to work on different parts of the world by merely making software adjustments.
This project aims at creating a simple, but functional, software defined radio receiver. This is the final project for the Complimentary Electronics course I took from October to December, 2010. The idea is to be able to receive standard radio (AM) broadcast signals with a desktop computer running LabView and equipped with a data acquisition card.
For more information and sample sound see here or download the slideshow.
Ant Nest Dynamics
Ants dynamics have been widely studied for the last years due to their capacity of self-organization, which have found applications even in internet engineering.
We have dedicated big efforts to develop a sensor, and setup an embedded system to measure nest activity in order to prove self-organization in the colony.
Preliminary results as well as a description of the sensing system are described in the paper Measuring Activity in Ant Colonies. Rev. Sci. Instrum. 77, 126102 (2006).
Our current focus is set on creating a model to reproduce our measurements.
Read more on social insects or the measurement system.
Elevator automation
Internet embedded systems are ubiquitous nowadays, everything from industrial production lines to home appliances are now plugged to the internet. We developed a proof of concept system to control an antique Otis elevator (early 1920's) using the SNAP embedded platform. This paves the way to a large number of unusual things in an elevator, namely sending e-mails or SMS to the maintenance personnel or being remotely configured through a web interface.
Download the presentation (PPT) to learn more.
Granular Matter
Granular matter is one of the best examples of a "complex system" you can find. Involving so many particles, and showing solid-like behaviors for some situations while having fluid-like behavior for others, they are of great interest to the scientific community as well as to engineers. Even if they have being studied in depth for many decades they can still surprise you with new phenomena such as "revolving rivers"; a new, very particular way of sand pile formation; and "uphill bumps"; soliton-like bumps moving against the flowing sand in a sand pile.
Read more about granular matter.
