National critical technologies report.

  • United States. Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Date:
1995
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: National critical technologies report. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    154/226 (page 128)
    and Japan Aviation Electronics. U.S. manufacturers retain a lead in global positioning systems (GPS) receivers and processing equipment, largely because of their experience developing the satellite system. Europeans and Japanese each have a number of firms working on GPS receivers, but industry experts predict the U.S. will maintain its position over the next several years. Japanese firms do not have strong technical capabilities across broad product lines but are strong in avionics display technologies. Japanese firms such as Hosiden, Sharp, Hitachi, NEC, and Toshiba have very high production yields and account for 95 percent of the world's active matrix liquid crystal displays— the technology of choice for most high-performance flat panel display (FPD) applications. Cockpit displays have evolved over the last decade from complex electromechanical instruments to electronic multifunction displays. The most advanced current commercial aircraft have displays based on cathode ray tubes, but FPDs are lighter, take up less space, consume less power, and offer increased display areas. Japanese firms were the first to achieve FPD sizes large enough for aircraft, and are now selling them on the commercial market (Boeing 777). Japan's FPD producers have only limited interest in producing FPDs for avionics applications, primarily because production runs are very small relative to the large FPD orders for computer and consumer electronic applications. Over the next several years, the United States could close the technology gap with Japan, based on government support for FPD and manufacturing technology development. Spacecraft avionics currently involves issues of reliability, space certification, miniaturization, reduced power consumption, and “black box” modularity. Spacecraft control systems, on-board navigation systems, and precise engine throttling would all benefit from further improvements in this area. There is a growing trend towards the standardization and assembly of building block components to achieve a number of different functions and in this way to avoid a requirement to develop a large quantity of special purpose systems. Surface transportation controls Surface transportation controls span such applications as microprocessor based emissions control systems for monitoring and controlling engine performance to reduce emissions and optimize engine performance to the myriad components. that would be essential to attain an intelligent vehicle highway system. A critical examination of the emissions control application suggests that these systems may operate effectively for much of a vehicles useful life, but ultimately, many of these systems may degrade and exhibit highly variable behavior that is accompanied by gross emissions of hydrocarbons, CO, and NOx. Thus, the issue is not to develop systems whose performance when new is exemplary. Rather, it is to develop reliable maintenance free emission control systems that will operate at close to new car levels when a vehicle is well past 100,000 miles and into its third, fourth, or fifth level of ownership. This remains a major challenge,