About Aurora Research, LLC

Aurora Research was founded in 1998 to nurture technologies that contribute to a healthy earth and a vibrant economy. Our focus is on renewable energy and energy efficiency, though other electronic design are consistent with these goals. We provide electronic design and implementation services to help you define your product, create prototypes, test them in the field, and find funding to grow your business.

Principal Roderick T. Hinman

Dr. Hinman received a Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from MIT, specializing in power electronics and integrated circuits. He designed motor drives and integrated them into electric vehicles for Solectria Corporation. As a senior member of research staff at Philips Research, he designed high voltage integrated circuits for high efficiency electronic fluorescent ballasts.

While working at Boston startup Talking Lights, LLC, he served as Principal Investigator on a number of Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I and Phase II grants. Grantor agencies have included the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation. He has designed, built, and tested for regulatory and safety approval a fluorescent lamp ballast that communicates optically to mobile computing devices, and has designed the corresponding optical receivers. He has performed proof-of-concept clinical trials of the resultant indoor location product with people who are blind and patients with Alzheimer's disease or traumatic brain injury.

He has worked in solar energy research, and most recently has been applying power electronics to vaccine refrigeration in developing economies.

Dr. Hinman is the inventor or co-inventor of 9 U.S. Patents spanning the areas of power electronics, electric vehicles, optical communication and refrigeration.

Patents

M. F. Schlecht and R. T. Hinman, Recovered Energy Logic Circuits, U.S. Patent #5,396,527, issued March 1995.

J. D. Worden, R. Espinosa, R. T. Hinman, and G. A. Pratt, Vehicle Drive Control System, U.S. Patent #5,808,427, issued September, 1998.

C. Chang and R. T. Hinman, Transformer Winding Technique With Reduced Parasitic Capacitance Effects, U.S. Patent #6,239,557, issued May 29, 2001.

R. T. Hinman, System for substantially eliminating transients upon resumption of feedback loop steady state operation after feedback loop interruption, U.S. Patent #6,291,946, issued September 18, 2001.

C. Chang and R. T. Hinman, Short circuit protection for multiple lamp LCD backlight ballasts with PWM dimming, U.S. Patent #6,498,437, issued December 24, 2002.

S. B. Leeb, G. Livshin, A. Avestruz, R. T. Hinman, E. C. Lupton, D. K. Jackson, and G. B. Hovorka, Communication with non-flickering illumination, U.S. Patent #7,016,115, issued March 21, 2006.

S. B. Leeb, R. T. Hinman, A. Avestruz, G. Livshin, J. Rodriguez, N. Peterson, and E. C. Lupton, “Multi-frequency dual-use system,” U.S. Patent #8,150,268, issued April 3, 2012.

E. Lupton, N. Peterson, J. Rodriguez, G. Livshin, A. Avestruz, R. Hinman, and S. B. Leeb, “Multi-Frequency Dual-Use System,” U.S. Patent #8,886,053, issued November 11, 2014.

Brian L. Pal, Roderick T. Hinman, Shieng Liu, Jennifer Ezu Hu, Fridrik Larusson, Fong-Li Chou, Nels R. Peterson, Lowell L. Wood, Jr., “Directing or modulating electrical power drawn by one or more loads from a solar photovoltaic module array while maintaining a buffer margin,” US Patent 10,707,683B2, issued 2020-07-07.

Selected Publications

R. T. Hinman and M. F. Schlecht, "Recovered Energy Logic: A Highly Efficient Alternative to Today's Logic Circuits," IEEE Power Electronics Specialists Conference, June 1993.

R. T. Hinman and M. F. Schlecht, ,"Power Dissipation Measurements on Recovered Energy Logic," IEEE Symposium on VLSI Circuits, June 1994.

S. B. Leeb, G. B. Hovorka, E. C. Lupton, R. T. Hinman, B. L. Bentzen, R. D. Easton, and L. Lashell, "Assistive Communication Systems for Disabled Individuals Using Visible Lighting," California State Northridge 15th Annual Conference on Technology for the Disabled, 2000.

D. T. Burke, S. B. Leeb, R. T. Hinman, E. C. Lupton, J. Burke, J. C. Schneider, B. Ahangar, K. Simpson, and E. A. K. Mayer, "Using Talking Lights to Assist Brain-Injured Patients with Daily Inpatient Therapeutic Schedule," Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 284-291, June, 2001.

R. T. Hinman, E. C. Lupton, S. B. Leeb, A. Avestruz, R. Gilmore, D. Paul and N. Peterson, "Using Talking Lights Illumination Based Communication Networks to Enhance Word Comprehension In Subjects who are Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing," Am. J. Audiology, June 2003.

G. Livshin, A. Avestruz, R. T. Hinman, S. B. Leeb and E. C. Lupton, "Context Aware Security Based On Illumination (CASI)," IEEE Conference on Technologies for Homeland Security, Spring 2003.

A. Avestruz, E. C. Lupton, R. T. Hinman, S. B. Leeb, and G. Livshin, "Smart Markers for In-depth and Perimeter Security Information Using Optical and Hybrid Communications," IEEE Conference on Technologies for Homeland Security, Spring 2003.

R. T. Hinman, et al., "Illumination-Based Locator Assists Alzheimer’s Patients," IEEE Pervasive Computing, Vol. 3, No. 2, p. 49, Apr.-June 2004.

Roderick Hinman, Páll Jónsson, Thomas Kreyche, Brian Pal, Jennifer Hu, Kris Natarajan, Ernest Some†, Hajia Kubura Daradara‡, Friðrik Lárusson, Nels Peterson, “Power Quality Challenges in Low-Resource Settings,” Global Good Fund 1, LLC, (white paper), December, 2019.