Noel Henson

This motor controller was designed for last-mile mobility applications such as e-bikes and scooters. The device with a heatsink measured 5.50" x 3.25" x 1.00", which is an 84% reduction in the volume of an off-the-shelf motor driver. The device could monitor its health with temperature sensors, voltage and current monitoring, and statistics. For vehicle monitoring, a 6-axis gyro was also included to measure safety and vibration. It had interfaces for both cellular and WiFi radios for telemetrics and IoT. GPS was also available to allow for geofencing and theft prevention.

I designed and developed a MIMD parallel desktop supercomputer with a dynamically reconfigurable topology. The system was comprised of an I/O server and 1-30 compute servers. The I/O server with 2 CPUs and disk drives could accept both PC and MacII I/O and video cards. The system was extensible from 32 to 900 CPUs. It used a custom, multi-way, reconfigurable network that could transfer 1Gbps within each compute server. Externally it utilized a custom 125Mbps fiber-optic network to extend the servers. The base system of 32 CPUs offered up to 45MFLOPS and 300MIPS. In 1990, it was so powerful that it was considered a munition.

On September 14, 1996, I fell off the roof of a house and found myself paralyzed from the waist down. I shattered my L2 vertebra and was told I would never walk again. However, being an engineer and amateur scientist, I did my research. The spinal nerves can heal; it just takes a very long time, so permanent atrophy can happen in peripheral muscles and nerves and render them useless.

At the time, I had already designed the grandparent of a modern pocket-sized and battery-operated TENS unit. While in the hospital, I turbocharged one of the prototypes I still had. I increased the voltage and current so that I could use rehabilitation and weight equipment autonomously. I used this equipment to keep my leg muscles and nerves healthy and operative while my spine healed. It took a very long time, but I can still walk today.