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SRNL technology named among ‘world’s best’
By Shelia Watson
Contributing Writer
A door-latching device developed at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River National Laboratory has received kudos from companies that follow emerging high-tech trends and could be licensed for manufacture as a commercial product.
The Smart Latch, an acoustic door-latch detector invented by Bob Eakle and built with the help of Charlie Fulghum and Larry Feutral, all employees at SRNL, was recognized as one of the top 25 technologies at the World’s Best Technologies showcase in Arlington, Texas, earlier this year.
The Smart Latch is designed to verify that doors are latched properly, providing an alert if the door does not latch. It works through neural network technology to analyze the lock’s performance acoustically.
The latch is installed in the same way as any standard lockset, with one difference: The device memorizes the precise sound, or the acoustical signature, of the door closing properly.
The device gives a visual and/or audible alarm if the door remains open for too long or is not properly latched.
The spark that prompted Eakle to invent the device was more of an observation, he said.
“In the past, I had worked with speech recognition software and speech recognition technologies, like the phones that let you speak a name and it dials a number,” he explained. “And where I work, security is a high priority, and we have multiple layers of security, including the human factor.
“I realized that whether it’s here or at home or in any business, no matter how much security you have, there’s still a human element. It still comes down to a person checking to make sure the door was locked. So I thought, ‘What can a person do that technology can’t do?’
And the answer is that a person knows when the door closes properly and locks, even when it’s a subconscious thing.”
The technology used in speech recognition technology is similar to how the brain works, Eakle said.
“Regardless of the background sounds or other information going on, the brain can recognize a word,” he said. “That theory can be applied to other technologies too.”
This is the second time in three years that technology developed at SRNL has been recognized at the competition. In 2005, the floating plasma screen mount, co-developed by Eakle and SRNL’s Don Pak, was featured in the top 25 technologies.
The World’s Best Technology show is an international competition that showcases seed-stage technologies and licensing opportunities from top universities, federal laboratories, federal agencies, research institutions and private companies.
The event, produced jointly by the National Association of Seed and Venture Funds and the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer, provides a forum for investors to view a range of technologies that have potential for global commercialization.
Each year, up to 75 exhibitors are screened by a panel of investors and commercialization experts, and of those, 25 receive top recognition for their new technologies.
The first prototype took only a few hours to create, Eakle said, although it was “in very rough form.” At the show, the revised and streamlined prototype was fastened onto a door and set up for display.
“Scores of people came by and it worked really well, and people immediately understood how it was supposed to work,” he said.
SRNL is a natural venue for investigating and creating emerging technologies. As the applied research and development laboratory at the DOE’s Savannah River Site, SRNL provides practical technology solutions in the areas of energy security, national and homeland security and the environment.
“As an R&D engineer, I have a lot of toys in my lab, and in this case, one thing I had available was the speech recognition circuit, and that allowed me to make the prototype quickly and train it to learn how to close the door properly,” Eakle said.
“Savannah River National Lab has a long tradition of putting science to work to create practical technology solutions that work,” said SRNL laboratory Director G. Todd Wright.
“That fits my definition of best: technologies that provide simple new ways of successfully accomplishing the task at hand.”
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