#Solar Car Powers Your House When It's Parked A team of twenty students at the Eindhoven University of Technology in The netherlands entered the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge 2013 a six-day solar race
across Australia's Outback in the new Michelin Cruiser Class. Practicality was paramount for these entries
and opened the sloping rear compartment where the car's guts--motors controller etc. --were housed in little more than a couple of glorified wooden cigar boxes leaving vast amounts of empty space between the rear wheels.
Plenty of room for groceries and no need to sneak around in the dark of night to go shopping though the car does have headlights and strips of red LED taillights.
At about 14 km h the system settles into cruise mode which is as quiet as the whir of any electric vehicle.
The 60-kw battery sheathed in a bright yellow casing runs down the center of the vehicle
Stella is CO2-neutral and the first energy-positive car in the world. The solar array charges while the car is in motion as well as
when it is parked. We get more energy out of the car than is needed to drive it said de Renet.
That power as much as twice what the car uses can be returned to the grid. The system uses a Wi-fi protocol for vehicles 802. 11p to see where the driver cannot.
While some of the newest cars available at dealerships today use radar and cameras to detect other cars
and objects they can't transmit around corners. Wi-fi as you probably know from using it in your house for phones laptops
and gaming systems in different rooms can. Stella s sensors picked up on the signal being transmitted by a nearby speed sign
and alerted the driver on a screen fixed to the clean knob-less dashboard that the limit was 25 mph.
A tall van blocked the view of a traffic light but the V2i system onboard Stella alerted the driver to the red light before anyone in the car could see it.
As of July Stella has a permanent license plate and permission to drive on public roads s
Boeing will receive $4. 2 billion to build its CST-100 spacecraft a vehicle it has been working on for the past four years
Despite not being chosen for the program Sierra nevada plans to further develop its Shuttle-esque vehicle the Dream Chaser perhaps as a resupply vehicle or for commercial space flight t
The car passed but apparently not without a little lobbying from its parent. As state officials have monitored the robot car's mileage on public roads Google has lobbied for the car to get different tests
and to report different accident figures than the DMV wants a new series of reports finds.
Harris'work offers a detailed sense of the car's abilities. It's also a look at Google's lobbying the extent
You can see excerpts there of the car's 2012 Nevada driving test with notes and checkmarks just like you might have gotten as a nervous 16-year-old.
That's where you can see what situations the Google car is good at and in
For Quartz Harris reported on Google's lobbying not to have to report#how often its cars turn over the controls to their human drivers
The car is designed to routinely cede control when it encounters situations it can't handle.
when its cars get into accidents while a human not its algorithms is driving. The California DMV disagreed.
Once assembled in the shop the walls are shipped flat by truck to the construction site.
A team of university engineers has created a vehicle headlight that adjusts itself so that drivers can keep their high beams on even
when other cars are coming toward them. To the driver the light still looks extra-bright.
To make headlights appear dimmer to oncoming drivers the system tracks other cars and turns off only the beams that are aimed at those drivers.
whether it's cars raindrops street signs or anything else within 1 to 2. 5 milliseconds according to Carnegie mellon University.
(and probably too expensive and delicate) to go into cars now. The university plans to install it into a truck for testing next year.
It will take a few more years yet to miniaturize the light enough for ordinary cars s
#The Helmet That Could Change Football For decades football players have worn rigid unyielding helmets that protected the skull
and humans teaming up in separate vehicles. By the 2030s humans with robot copilots could fly alongside robots remotely controlled by humans u
so that they can travel safely through skies without hitting other vehicles. Google s driverless car program is an obvious touchstone for this project but it s a limited one.
Cars on roads travel in close proximity and only move in two dimensions. Aircraft operate in vast empty skies
Training a car to sense and avoid other cars#is simpler than doing the same for an aircraft.
Still Google s development and prior experience with cars is a strong sign that this work will continue and ultimately yield fruit.
Michael Toscano CEO of#the Association for Unmanned vehicle Systems International said thatit s worth noting that Google tested this technology in Australia first.
It's#similar#to#the#challenge#of#making sure#driverless cars can safely avoid cars with human drivers
#Meet Harley davidson's First Electric motorcycle For 111 years, the Harley davidson has been known for many thingsreedom, leather,
This fall, before the motorcycle goes into production, Harley will take it on a tour of 30 dealers on both coasts to get feedback.
92 mph Car News You Should Care About 1) Ford will add adaptive steering into some models in 2015.
The technology, thus far limited to luxury vehicles, varies the steering ratio with the speed, making parking easier
year) that mounts to the roof of Audi a4 and S4 sedans, and enables semi-autonomous driving on highways. 4) Honda has started using 3-D visualization technology co-developed with tech firm 3dx CITE for crash simulations.
The Mistral class ship is designed to carry up to 700 troops, over 60 land vehicles, and around 30 light helicopters within landing distance of a coast, where they will (in peaceful situations) arrive
and today both cars and smartphones rely on GPS satellites to know exactly where they are.
if your car could sense when you were falling asleep behind the wheel, and wake you up before you caused an accident?
other information the project has put online suggests that it has succeeded at consistently filtering out oiselike car vibrations from the sensor data,
IEEE Spectrum notes that some luxury carmakers are already using sensors such as cameras to catch driver fatigue in time to stop accidents,
With augmented reality systems in your car signs you see could be translated automatically so that what you percieveâ is the sign in your language without distraction.
when the vehicle's attitude is beyond recovery or control in order to contain the damage from any explosion or debris in the launch area.
The Cygnus cargo vehicle destroyed on this accident was carrying a lot of small satellites owned by schools universities and startups.
One solution to overcomeâ these constraints is the use of marine drones autonomous surfaceâ orâ underwater vehicles capable of traversing great distances and operatingâ independently for prolonged periods of time.
The vehicles carry a range of instruments for observing these animals. As well as measuring the temperature of the water
C-Enduroc-Enduro is an innovative long-endurance autonomous surface vehicle built by Autonomous Surface Vehicles (ASV.
The vehicle was launched officially in March 2014. Built to operate in all marine environments C-Enduro uses solar panels a wind generator a lightweight diesel generator
Wave Gliderthe Wave Glider is an autonomous environmentally-friendly oceangoing vehicle developed by Liquid Robotics.
Slocum Gliderthe Slocum Glider built by Teledyne Webb Research is a high-endurance vehicle equipped with a variety of sensors.
Images and video courtesy ofâ MOST Autonomous Vessels Ltdâ Autonomous Surface Vehicles (ASV) andâ National Oceanographic Centre t
#We#re are many steps away from wearing a device that knows what turning your car on
 Cars are in the front line with incremental modifications such as the sensory-enabled brakes already in the market.
One challenge is to make sure the vehicles have the ability to rendezvous and perform coordinated landings autonomously.
The controller handles the nonlinearities inherent in the motions of the two vehicles and is stable in the face of multi-second time delays allowing unreliable wifi communication to be used in the landing.
when hovering over the ground vehicle. For more information you can read the paper Coordinated landing of a quadrotor on a skid-steered ground vehicle in the presence of time delays (John M. Daly Yan Ma Steven L. Waslander Autonomous
Robots Springer US July 2014) or ask questions below! Robohub is an online platform that brings together leading communicators in robotics research start-ups business and education from around the world o
Overall automotive patents make up around one third of the total not including other types of vehicles such as trucks buses agricultural machinery aircraft and aerospace/defence.
Most of the patents in the UK dataset are in the field of autonomous vehicles includingâ road vehicles unmanned aerial vehicles and unmanned underwater vehicles.
The as yet unnamed car is very small (looks smaller than a Smart) and can accommodate two people and some luggage.
and where the side view mirrors would have been in a regular car. Thanks to Google previous experience with self-driving cars one can expect very good performance in real environments;
The car itself may look like a toy but it is cleverly and purposefully designed to be as cute as possible
and reduce fear of its autonomous status. Â Small cars in general may be more vulnerable in a crash with a heavier vehicle
and most small cars from established manufacturers achieve very high scores in a crash test. The main chassis is made from robust box sections of (probably) aluminum tubing and there also a tubular roll cage above.
Even the suspension wishbones look highly over-engineered for a 25mph city car. A substantial crash box is placed in the front
and above it the whole front panel is made of foam so the car is not only safe for its passengers but for pedestrians as well.
As mentioned above the most striking aspect of the car is its lack of any kind of manual control.
but its main feature was the interior where similarly to Google car no manual controls were present
and automobile manufacturing food processing and the manufacturing of pharmaceutical electronic and dangerous products. The document says that there will be subsidies of up to 30000 yuan (4800 US dollars) for those who purchase
and to search vehicles. By 2007 more than 800 of these military robots were in use throughout Afghanistan Iraq and several other countries.
and that have a positive impact on the world. â#Colin Angle CEO of irobot described Google recent acquisitions as a logistics play around self driving vehicles
The vision is clearly to capitalize on the DARPA Grand Challenges as Google has done so thoroughly with the automobile/self driving challenge.
According to Mueller the algorithm allows the vehicle to remain in flight despite the loss of one two or possibly even three propellers.
#Honda automatic driverless valet parking system Honda has developed a low-cost automatic valet parking system that uses parking lot surveillance cameras to help park cars automatically.
In this demonstration when a car is left in the drop-off area of a parking lot it receives information about
This system can automatically park multiple cars efficiently. Honda sees a lot of potential in a system such as this especially
if it is implemented in the large parking lots of suburban shopping centers. f a store introduces this system customers can drop their car off in front of the store
and the car will go to a parking space automatically in cooperation with the parking lot. Then when customers come out with all their shopping they can just wait in front of the store
and the car will come to them. That the situation wee demonstrating here.?As the number of cars increases itl become essential to move them around efficiently.
So we think this kind of system will become increasingly necessary. s cars equipped with rear cameras only are the most common type in Japan Honda decided to use them in this first prototype.
Vision from the rear camera is supplemented with that from surveillance cameras to create a system that can see more around the car. he information that used to move the cars such as white lines is sent to the cars as maps.
Here wee demonstrating that kind of concept and showing that it could actually be implemented as easily as this. onda plan to create a specification
which combines car cameras and parking lot management systems and develop ways to operate them smoothly.
or nanorobots our robots are programmed to behave as simple remote control cars and tuned to listen to the same frequency.
and can model robots including roombas tanks and cars. It has two inputs: forward speed and turning rate.
You can test this out by purchasing several RC cars tuned to the same radio frequency.
If you command the cars to go forward all will move forward. If you command them to turn all turnbut due to process noise all turn a slightly different amount.
This modular flying vehicle would then break apart in the air and then repeat the process over again but in a new randomly-generated configuration.
and created a linear dynamics model of the vehicle in order to provide us with some intuition about its physical dynamics.
Our initial hope was to demonstrate each of the key abilities using a single set of vehicles
in order to make the vehicle lighter for flight. Its primary limitation however was its inability to demonstrate coordinated mobility for randomly assembled configurations.
One additional revision of the vehicle was created prior to arriving at the current design. In designing Revision 1 one of our major goals was to integrate both driving and flying capabilities.
Although lightweight and mechanically robust the ethyl polypropylene foam chassis we used in the proof-of-concept vehicle was difficult to manufacture
when conducting experiments with our vehicle within the environment of a 3d motion capture system (needed for ground truth measurements)
and (2) measurement information (or control information) needed to be transmitted to the vehicle wirelessly for control purposes which at the time of development (using Wifi) generally incurred a lot of latency and packet loss.
and utilized an electrical bus to clean up the mess of communication lines we had in Revision 1. A detailed description is given in the next section.
Standard on most aerial vehicles is a 3-axis rate-gyroscope which is used for measuring body angular velocities as well as estimating the attitude of the vehicle in flight.
An infrared distance measurement sensor is used for measuring the distance of a unit to the ground.
Not only is used this for estimating the altitude of the vehicle but if units share their distance measurements with one another they can also estimate the vehicle tilt
when flying over a flat surface. We have designed each unit with magnetic interfaces located along each of its six sides.
in order to achieve flight â##without it the vehicle would simple rip itself apart before takeoff.
Thus each unit is generating the appropriate control effort necessary to keep the vehicle in flight
The only information that a unit needs for flight is its local sensor data and its position with respect to the vehicle centre of mass.
if each unit knows the physical configuration of the vehicle. In order for a unit to determine this on its own each unit can work out its relation to neighbouring units by sharing appropriate information.
By forwarding this information around the network each unit can arrive at the physical configuration of the vehicle much like how one might establish his/her family tree.
Assuming a rigid body for the vehicle which was taken into account when designing the chassis local sensor information provides a unit with a rough estimate of the vehicle tilt and altitude.
And knowing its position with respect to the centre of mass it straightforward to work out the appropriate control effort needed to counteract any disturbances.
We instead developed a means for automatically computing the tuning parameters for any flight-feasible configuration of the vehicle that would result in best flight performance.
In carefullly analyzing the parameters obtained for a variety of configurations we then developed a scalable method for mapping the configuration of a vehicle to its approximated optimal control tuning parameters.
Despite a few hiccups (two quads were damaged during setup and some repairs had to be done on the fly) Monday shoot went pretty smoothly. t tookâ about two
and one flying Gopro attached to a quad) to document Dndrea TED talk. An additional camera shot a aking ofvideo as well. tâ#pretty busy
and the drone is indeed a toy quad rotor meant for playing games. We thought we could develop a game for the Parrot that would serve as a means for crowdsourcing the data we needed.
Supervised traffic jam assist After a short day looking at robocars at CES a more full day was full of the usual equipment cameras TVS audio and the like and visits to several car booths.
Ie expanded my gallery of notable things with captions with cars and other technology. Lots of people were making demonstrations of traffic jam assist at CES simple self-driving at low speeds among other cars.
All the demos were supervised of a traffic jam assist. This style of product (as well as supervised highway cruising) is the first thing that car companies are delivering (though they are also delivering various parking assist
This is a readily solvable problem today you really just have to follow the other cars
The most impressive car is Delphi a collaboration with folks out of CMU. The Delphi car a modified Audi SUV has no fewer than 6 4-plane LIDARS and an even larger number of radars.
It helps if you make the radars as otherwise this is an expensive bill of materials.
With all the radars the vehicle can look left and right and back left and back right as well as forward
Called Project Wing, the system was based on a mechanically simple ailsitterdesign a hybrid vehicle that takes off vertically like a multirotor
For fast forward flight, the vehicle tilts to a near-horizontal orientation, resulting in efficient lift production due to the conventional wing design.
While the vehicle is hovering, it is crucial that a large part of the flaps are within the propeller-induced airstream,
Two radios are attached on the bottom side of the vehicle; a Wifly module for high-bandwidth telemetry,
if the vehicle does not receive control commands anymore or if the battery voltage is too low are implemented also on the FMU.
Dr. Jacco van Loon, an astrophysicist at Keele University and lead author of the new paper.
#Google Self-driving cars Ready for Public roads Google announced Friday its self-driving prototype cars were ready to leave the test track
in a step forward for its autonomous automobile program. The move comes after Google's internal testing of the bubble-shaped vehicle over the past year
and more extensive experience with technology adapted for existing cars.""Now we're announcing the next step for our project:
this summer, a few of the prototype vehicles we've created will leave the test track and hit the familiar roads of Mountain view, California,
with our safety drivers aboard,"said project chief Chris Urmson in a blog post.""We've been running the vehicles through rigorous testing at our test facilities,
and ensuring our software and sensors work as theye supposed to on this new vehicle."
"The Google car uses the same technology as its fleet of Lexus SUVS which has logged some 1. 6 million kilometers (one million miles)."
"So the new prototypes already have lots of experience to draw on--in fact, it's the equivalent of about 75 years of typical American adult driving experience,
and interacts with the vehicles, and to uncovering challenges that are unique to a fully self-driving vehicle."
"Google said earlier this week its adapted vehicles on the road had been involved in 11 minor accidents, but that none were the fault of the technology.
That included being hit from behind by other cars or sideswiped p
#Engineered Bacteria Send A Signal When Water Gets Polluted Until now, there hasn been a simple, inexpensive and quick way to monitor water quality.
But a team of entrepreneurs from Calgary, Canada, has developed a solution. It called FRED, for Field-Ready Electrochemical Detector,
#Wireless Charger Powers Electric car In Drive or Park Today, charging an electric car requires a plug and an outlet.
But in the future, charging an electric vehicle may require nothing more than driving and parking. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind energy and Energy system Technology IWES in Kassel, Germany, have developed a wireless charger system that not only recharges a battery but also feeds excess energy back into the electrical grid.
parking space or garage and the other fitted to the underside of electric car. With this system in place, energy can be transmitted without a plug
The distance between the car coils and road coils can be up to 20 centimeters (7. 8 inches) for the technology to work,
which limits their usefulness for cars with larger ground clearance. The system aims to provide several options to EV owners,
Scientists in the UK, for example, are developing electric highways to charge electric cars. However, unlike other options, this coil system from Fraunhofer Institute can also discharge the electricity stored in a vehicle battery
and feed back into the grid to offset power surges. This technology is particularly cost-effective,
Wee likely to be using a lot more batteries in coming years, particularly in consumer electronics and electric vehicles.
#Sonic Tractor Beam Levitates Plastic Beads The future, apparently, is going to be loud. In what is being termed the world first sonic tractor beam,
researchers in Britain have developed an acoustic hologram that can hold, move and manipulate objects in mid-air.
Tractor beams have been a reliable staple in science fiction movies like tar Wars, where theye used to reel in uncooperative Rebel blockade runners and pesky Corellian freighters.
The tractor beam developed by the U k. team uses high-amplitude sound waves and works on a much smaller scale.
Hence the tractor beam effect. Similar freestanding haptic holograms have been developed previously, but without the precision required to hold an object in place
The sonic tractor beam could have some interesting applications down the line, according to the research team.
mentioning technologies that would make buildings or vehicles more energy efficient as one example.""But as we tackle economy wide emissions
"These could include emissions from automobiles, where collecting CO2 pollution from each car is infeasible. c
#Tapeworms may be good for your brain Tapeworms get a bad rap. Theye voracious parasites that burrow into gut walls and devour nutrients like a nightmarish version of The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
says Judy Van de Water, an internal medicine specialist at the University of California, Davis, who did not take part in the research. his study getting data that can begin addressing the connection more directly.
and moves data with photons of light instead of electrons would make today chips look like proverbial horses and buggies.
#Researchers create a sonic tractor beam Using a simple set of loudspeakers, scientists have figured out a way to levitate
If perfected, this onic tractor beamcould find uses ranging from treating kidney stones to creating artificial gravity on the International space station.
so the sonic tractor beam might be used to remove kidney stones and clots, deliver drug-laden capsules to various parts of the body,
One example comes from a project with Briggs Automotive to adjust a rear spoiler a wing on race cars
and many street cars that can rotate upwards to increase traction on the tires by increasing drag
Tibbits posits. ou can actually transform the wing panels on the car so that when they meet moisture they change
and put more traction on the car. When they dry out they become more aerodynamic and you can go faster.
and storage devices used in handheld electronics, vehicles, and power plants, making them more cost-effective, efficient and environmentally friendly.
"The group has, over the past 20 years, used various robots to test over 150 different material systems, with potential applications for ballistic missiles to rocketry to automobile manufacturing."
The lab has tested over 150 different material systems, with potential applications for ballistic missiles to rocketry to automobile manufacturing.
The arena is equipped with a motion capture system that provides vehicle position and attitude measurements for the small custom quadrocopters.
300 feet (700 meters) a year comparable to a car accelerating from 55 to 75 mph.
the glaciers behind the collapsed part of the shelf accelerated as much as eightfold comparable to a car accelerating from 55 to 440 mph.
or cars jammed in traffic, said Jeffrey Fredberg, professor of bioengineering and physiology at the Harvard Chan School and one of the senior authors of the study,
or an electric car youl find that batteries take up most of the space inside. Indeed, the recent evolution of batteries has made it possible to pack ample power in small places.
the technology now used in everything from cellphones to electric cars. The electrolyte in such batteries typically a liquid organic solvent whose function is to transport charged particles from one of a battery two electrodes to the other during charging
or a car. The team also included MIT graduate student William Richards and postdoc Jae Chul Kim;
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