Richard Blair, assistant professor of chemistry and forensic science at UCF, and a biofuels specialist, uses a milling process to convert raw materials to simple sugars and other useful compounds.  He was initially exposed to the general technique while working at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).  Blair’s process uses a rotating drum to grind raw materials and, in a twist, uses a natural and inexpensive catalyst to convert cellulose into simple sugars.  Most techniques used today rely on sulfuric acid to spark the conversion process, resulting in hazardous byproducts that must be reprocessed prior to disposal.

“The ball mill converts biomass immediately to a sellable product. It is inherently green and easily scalable: this is unique because many lab processes are not green or easily scalable,” Blair said.

Many biofuel production systems use sugars as the raw materials.  The availability of sugar is often limited by crop performance:  if crop yields are low, or if crops fail, then biofuels facilities – such as ethanol plants – do not have the sugar feedstock needed to create biofuel.

Blair thought that the ball mill had potential for biofuel production because it will convert any type of biomass – from yard waste to scrub brush – into sugar and it doesn’t leave behind problematic by-products.  For Thor this could eliminate the problem of having to compete with food supplies such as corn and soybeans, for raw materials or feedstock.

“UCF’s breakthrough cellulose-to-sugar technology provides a rational, practical, and efficient path that broadens feedstock possibilities for biofuels production.  This gives us more flexibility in site selection,” said Thor’s CEO Bill Cox.  “This also lessens our dependence upon specific crop cycles, and to inherent price swings that occur within all crop commodities.”

Cox learned of the UCF technology at the Space Coast Energy Symposium sponsored by the Florida Cleantech Acceleration Network in February.

Thor plans to scale-up and incorporate UCF’s technology as part of its future commercial-scale biofuels production facilities, including a likely expansion in Brevard County later this year. The company will use the technology to produce clean fuels that offer higher horsepower and lower emissions.  Thor’s commercial plants could create over 50 jobs, and is currently working with Brevard County’s Economic Development Commission, the State’s TRDA, and other State agencies as it considers possible expansion opportunities in Florida.  Headquartered in Singapore, Thor also has activities in Latin America and the Philippines.

Humberto Campins, a professor who discovered water ice on two different asteroids last year, has just gotten the go-ahead for the NASA-sponsored OSIRIS-REx mission.

The mission is a first-of-its-kind. The actual flight to the nearby asteroid will pose challenges because asteroids have unusual gravity fields and can rotate much quicker than planets. Navigating their space vehicle to land on this type of asteroid – millions of miles away from Earth – and scoop up a sample of “primitive” space rock also will be a first for the team.

While Campins is leaving the navigation to others on the team, he will work with lead investigator Michael Drake from the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą of Arizona, on choosing the best spot on the asteroid for obtaining the sample and what this sample will tell us about the origins of life on Earth.

“This is as exciting as it gets,” Campins said from the Paris Observatory in France, where he is conducting research with European colleagues. “The asteroid fragments we will retrieve will be pristine and not modified during atmospheric entry.”

Meteorites that hit the ground can lose more than 99% of their mass, and that 99% is likely to contain the most interesting information about Earth’s water and organic molecules, Campins said.

“This sample could also hold very important clues about how the Earth and other planets in our solar system formed and evolved,” he added.

The team had eagerly been waiting to see if NASA would select their project from a list of three finalists for a slot in the space agency’s New Frontiers Missions. The mission is part of NASA’s New Frontiers Program, a science-driven program aimed at characterizing and understanding the bodies that constitute the solar system. The goal is to “illuminate the origin, evolution, and current state of the solar system.”

The non-manned mission could launch as early as 2016.

This mission is expected to cost approximately $800 million, which includes funds to design the instrument that will lasso the sample and bring it back to earth.

The money also will cover the cost to circle and analyze the asteroid for a year with an array of special instruments to help select the optimal sampling spot. That’s where a mechanism will scoop up the sample and place it in a capsule. That capsule later will come back to Earth, splashing in an ocean with the help of a parachute.

“The even harder work will begin once we have our sample,” Campins said. “We will spend at least two years going over every piece of information we gather.”

The target, asteroid RQ36, is about 600 yards in diameter and comes relatively close to Earth. The asteroid has even been designated as “potentially hazardous” because there is a 1 in 1,800 chance that it could slam into Earth in 2170.

“Sure, what we learn from this mission could help us should we need to try to avert an unlikely hit in the future,” Campins said. “But the real prize is the unique and pristine material we will find and the new insights we will gain.”

Primitive asteroids are remnants of the solar nebula, from which the Sun and the planets in our solar system formed, some 4.5 billion years ago.

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., will provide overall mission management, systems engineering, and safety and mission assurance. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver will build the spacecraft. The OSIRIS-REx payload includes instruments from the şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą of Arizona, Goddard, Arizona State şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą in Tempe and the Canadian Space Agency. NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., the Langley Research Center in Hampton Va., and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., also are involved. The science team is composed of numerous researchers from universities, private and government agencies.

General Dynamics Robotic Systems will lead the eight-partner consortium—UCF, Boston Dynamics, Carnegie-Mellon şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą, California Institute of Technology Jet Propulsion Lab, Florida A&M şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą, QinetiQ North America, and the şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą of Pennsylvania are the other members.

The Army expects the Robotics Collaborative Technology Alliance (RCTA) to pursue foundational robotics technologies that will enable future human-robot teams to accomplish a wide range of missions, according to Dr. Jon Bornstein, chief of the Army Research Laboratory’s robotics autonomous systems division.

The goal is to relieve soldiers of some of the burdens of the battlefield. A robotic system that can adapt to and learn from a changing battlefield environment would do that, according to Bornstein.

Bornstein compared robotic systems to the way soldiers now work with K-9 units.

“They’re part of the team, and we want these unmanned systems to be part of a team,” he said. “There must be an intuitive bond between the soldier and robot—a trust.”

Dr. Florian Jentsch, head of the Team Performance Lab and joint-appointed in the Department of Psychology and at UCF’s Institute for Simulation & Training (IST), said “Participation in the Robotics CTA is a wonderful opportunity for the Team Performance Laboratory, for IST, UCF, and ultimately for the Central Florida region, to be involved in the robotics advanced research and development program for the U.S. armed forces.”

The Team Performance Laboratory under a previous multi-year alliance with the Army Research Lab studied command and control issues with human-robot teams. Explorations under this new alliance will include intelligence, learning and robot-human interaction. Some examples are how warfighters can form teams with robots that coordinate parts of the team’s tasks and how soldiers might interact with robotic partners that carry weapons and can identify potential targets.

At this stage of the research a significant hurdle to surmount, is the trust issue, according to IST director Dr. Randall Shumaker.

“Science fiction literature abounds with stories of human reliance on robot intelligence gone awry,” said Shumaker. “At the heart of this is a fear of betrayal — a lack of trust. Trust issues also exist between humans, but we have learned to minimize them. We are only just scratching the surface with artificial intelligence.”

Contacts: