and average speeds--and the source of electricity for charging batteries. In city driving with frequent stops the electric trucks clearly outperform diesel vehicles.
if the battery must be replaced early or if they are used mainly for highway driving. The relative benefits of the electric vehicles the researchers found depend on vehicle efficiency associated with drive cycle diesel fuel price travel demand electric drive battery replacement
and price electricity generation and transmission efficiency electric truck recharging infrastructure and purchase price. The study findings were reported July 16 2013 in the journal Environmental science and Technology.
and electricity and the potential cost of replacing an electric truck's battery pack if it has a shorter-than-expected lifetime.
Lithium-ion battery packs are expected to last the lifetime of the trucks as much as 150000 miles for the drive cycles tested.
Battery price reductions down the road could have a large effect on the cost-competitiveness of electric trucks
#Flash memory: Silicon oxide memories transcend a hurdlea Rice university laboratory pioneering memory devices that use cheap plentiful silicon oxide to store data has pushed them a step further with chips that show the technology's practicality.
The team led by Rice chemist James Tour has built a 1-kilobit rewritable silicon oxide device with diodes that eliminate data-corrupting crosstalk.
With gigabytes of flash memory becoming steadily cheaper a 1k nonvolatile memory unit has little practical use.
But as a proof of concept the chip shows it should be possible to surpass the limitations of flash memory in packing density energy consumption per bit
The circuits require only two terminals instead of three as in most memory chips. The crossbar memories built by the Rice lab are flexible resist heat
which would allow higher density information storage than conventional two-state memory systems. The devices dubbed one diode-one resistor (1d-1r) worked especially well
In a (1r) crossbar structure with just the memory material if we made 1024 cells only about 63 cells would work individually.
From the engineering side of this integrating diodes into a 1k memory array is no small feat Tour said.
battery electric vehicles such as the Nissan Leaf; hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles such as the Mercedes F-Cell scheduled to be introduced about 2014;
These vehicles also rely on batteries which are projected to drop steeply in price. However the report says that limited range
Advanced battery technologies under development all face serious technical challenges. When hydrogen is used as a fuel cell in electric vehicles the only vehicle emission is water.
Fuel cell vehicles are not subject to the limitations of battery vehicles but developing a hydrogen infrastructure in concert with a growing number of fuel cell vehicles will be difficult and expensive the report says.
The researchers'findings are scheduled to be published in the April issue of the Journal of Bionic Engineering.
and Basic Research to Enable Agriculture Development (BREAD) the Howard Buffett Foundation the Burroughs Wellcome Fund and the Center for Data analytics at Georgia Tech.
and when using a robot milking system in the worst-case scenario when a cow has failed to enter the robot for milking
or when it has failed several milking attempts in its history. Kauppi's doctoral dissertation sought to identify critical points in cow behaviour pointing to deterioration in the cow's health.
The study also investigated alterations in cow behaviour in relation to successful completion of robotic milking procedure as well as in dairy management practices
The Penn State engineers also created decoys using a 3d printing process. In this method they molded plastic into the size
and 3d printed decoys as well as dead female emerald ash borers onto leaves in forests in Hungary to see which of them best attracted wild males.
However while the males initially flew toward the simpler 3d printed decoys they did not land on them.
According to Domingue the light-scattering properties of the beetle's shell--which the team experimentally demonstrated using a white laser--made the nano-bioreplicated decoys more lifelike and therefore more attractive to males than the non-textured 3d printed decoy.
Knightly Anand and Rice graduate student Ryan Guerra designed the first open-source UHF multiuser MIMO test system.
Like eyes the phytochrome is a light sensor that converts sunlight into chemical signals to get these jobs done.
Vierstra and his team found that by making specific changes to the light sensor they can dupe it into staying in its active state longer.
#Silicon oxide for better computer memory: Use of porous silicon oxide reduces forming voltage, improves manufacturabilityrice University's breakthrough silicon oxide technology for high-density next-generation computer memory is one step closer to mass production thanks to a refinement that will allow manufacturers to fabricate devices at room temperature with conventional
production methods. First discovered five years ago Rice's silicon oxide memories are a type of two-terminal resistive random-access memory (RRAM) technology.
This memory is superior to all other two-terminal unipolar resistive memories by almost every metric Tour said.
The basic concept behind resistive memory devices is the insertion of a dielectric material--one that won't normally conduct electricity--between two wires.
RRAM is under development worldwide and expected to supplant flash memory technology in the marketplace within a few years
For example manufacturers have announced plans for RRAM prototype chips that will be capable of storing about one terabyte of data on a device the size of a postage stamp--more than 50 times the data density of current flash memory technology.
and even used it for exotic new devices like transparent flexible memory chips. At the same time the researchers also conducted countless tests to compare the performance of silicon oxide memories with competing dielectric RRAM technologies.
and a performance standpoint for nonvolatile memory Tour said. It can be manufactured at room temperature has an extremely low forming voltage high on-off ratio low power consumption nine-bit capacity per cell exceptional switching speeds and excellent cycling endurance.
and multi-bit capacity--are extremely appealing to memory companies. This is a major accomplishment and we've already been approached by companies interested in licensing this new technology he said.
#University students developing robotic gardening technologyfor more than a half-century NASA has made the stuff of science fiction into reality.
Researchers are continuing that tradition by designing robots to work in a deep-space habitat tending gardens and growing food for astronaut explorers.
It is a concept for producing edible plants during long-term missions to destinations such as Mars. Heather Hava who is working on a doctorate in aerospace engineering sciences explains that the goal is to have robots do much of the monotonous tasks saving time
Each has its own sensor run by an embedded computer. We envision dozens of SPOTS on a space habitat said Dane Larsen who is working on a master's degree on computer science.
The robots and plants are networked together and the SPOTS have the ability to monitor their fruit's
ROGR is a robot on wheels has a forklift to move SPOTS a mechanical arm for manipulating the plants
or with a controller similar to those used with video games. The ROGR robots can visit a specific plant to deliver water
or to locate and grasp a fruit or vegetable. If an astronaut requests tomatoes for a salad the system decides which specific plants have the ripest tomatoes
I had been working on developing robotic farming systems he said. Now I have an opportunity to bridge Earth farming systems to space.
Using a combination of systems biology and bioinformatic techniques the scientists cleverly isolated proteins which when mutated abolished the plantâ##s ability to respond to CO2 stress.
or seeding clouds to reduce the amount of light entering earth's atmosphere. Those approaches to climate engineering aren't likely to be effective or practical in slowing global warming.
While cloud seeding is cheap and potentially as effective as improving forestry practices the approach and its potential impacts are understood not well enough for widespread use the team concluded.
if we started making more clouds. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of California-Los angeles. The original article was written by Meg Sullivan.
A second phase for this technologies is the development of neural networks to give some artificial intelligence to the greenhouses.
The computerized navigation system uses a mobile CT-scanner to take cross-sectional images of the spine
Another study found that the computerized navigation system and the mobile CT scanner allowed for more accurate surgical placement even within the narrowest parts of the thoracic spine particularly challenging regions in women
and the potential future use of robotic spine surgery with computer navigation. The special issue of the journal can be accessed at:
and big data tools that help analyze plant information. He calls his instrument a transformative leap in the study of plant phenotypes--the look size color development and other observable traits of plants.
As the plants within all those chambers grow a camera attached to a robotic arm takes thousands of images of cells seeds roots and shoots.
It will take big data tools to help researchers store manage and analyze all the photo data collected by the instrument.
#Lignin breakthroughs serve as GPS for plant researchresearchers at North carolina State university have developed the equivalent of GPS directions for future plant scientists to understand how plants adapt to the environment
The GPS-like findings could reduce years of research time required to make future advances Chiang says.
He is also a faculty member at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute. Plant and microbial biology professor emeritus Bob B. Buchanan co-led the research
Dwi Susanti the lead author recently received her doctoral degree in genetics bioinformatics and computational biology from the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute and is currently a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Biochemistry at Virginia Tech.
Usha Loganathan a graduate student in the Department of Biological sciences in the College of Science at Virginia Tech also participated in the study.
The proliferation of an Internet of things. Sensor technology, that is coming from the physical infrastructure (like that used on the IBM campus),
is making way for a huge amount of objects that are connected to the Internet that can help people with tasks.
This Internet of things exists to give people information by increasing the connection between people and their cities,
and by using people themselves as the sensor technology. With feedback from citizens, cities can be smarter.
use this sensor technology too. People are probably better at defining what they need than any technology,
It hasn't hit the radar. Smartplanet: We've asked water experts about why it matters.
Are we ready for a robotic barista? Humans have proven to be highly adaptable when it comes to replacing personal service with that of a computer.
when a robot supplants our barista? One company is betting that humankind will actually dig it.
Austin-based Briggo has spent the last 18 months testing a robotic barista at the University of Texas at Austin's Flawn Academic Center.
About the only thing the Briggo robot doesn't do is ask you how your day's going.
and entered Melanie as the pick-up name so the robot would announce that the drink he was about to order was for me.
The order goes up into the cloud and lands with the robot, who then sends a reply,
educating them about the process and physically picking up the cup from the robot to hand to the customer.
Pierce is now responsible for feeding the robot high-quality ingredients, like coffee beans roasted within the week
Inside the robot, every cup of coffee is ground fresh. Brewed coffee takes 15 to 30 seconds per drink,
I heard the sound of water--like any good robot, it cleaned itself after every order.
The right place for robotic coffee Terry Mahlum, regional director for Delaware North Companies Travel Hospitality Services,
It's the right place for robotic coffee. The kiosk is slated for a central location across from Gate 13 in the American airlines terminal.
Nahmias is no stranger to food robots. He grew up in Mexico city, and his private school had a French fry machine.
But he likes the fact that Briggo's robot stores drink preferences so customers can easily repeat an order--which is advanced more than machines like the Rubi,
A new conversation, new coffee culture I stepped outside of the robot vortex and Nater pulled out his ipad,
showing me renderings of the new Briggo robot, which was designed by an internationally recognized industrial design firm.
People really wanted to see the robot, so there is a window to watch the inner-workings of the machine.
By early this year, Briggo had raised about $9 million for the next generation robot and expansion, almost exclusively from angel investors in Austin.
As for Nater, he's fired up about the robot and the drinks, but he's also eager for Briggo's next step in social media.
And just like the neighborhood barista, the robot remembers what they like. Everything else I consume in life I want variation,
Tech, sustainability meet on the robotic marijuana farmmr. Greenthumb's latest gardening tool may just be...
handhelds and wireless sensors--is being spearheaded by Pepsico and Cambridge university on a pilot basis, as part of the food company's overriding agenda to develop an integrated crop management system that will help the company reduce the carbon emissions
These companies, Cyber-Rain and ET Water, have released both recently cloud services that provide guidance about
Cyber-Rain's application, called XCI Cloud, works in conjunction with the company's controller technologies to help residential users better control watering.
XCI Cloud gives property owners and managers a graphical tool that lets them manage watering from any Internet-connected computer in the world...
along with access to the cloud application, starts at $499. ET Water's GNOME Smart Irrigation Calculator,
which is billed as ET Water's first consumer application doesn't rely on any particular sensor technology.
but these cloud-based services will probably become more ubiquitous. I wouldn't be surprised to see more water utilities consider layering such applications into their web sites
We also built an open-source kit that will allow people to build these at home for a very low cost, about $1, 000.
Distributed systems: like the grid, we will see a rise into smaller distributed wastewater systems, serving 1,
Picarro sensors can read'nature's bar code'You may have read about Picarro, which makes sensors for detecting
and measuring various carbon and gas emissions. Those sensors have typically been used for finding gas leaks
or for measuring how changes in weather patterns. Now, Picarro is working with agriculture and food products companies to apply the sensors to measuring the isotopes in foods.
The intention: help food companies spot check and confirm the origins of the ingredients more cost-effectively.
or  cause a pileup due to religiously following GPS technology now, would you? Image credit:
app FTC creates guidelines for facial recognition technology use The spy-free app you can use to stop surveillance
They are working on things like better batteries to replace oil used in transportation. And they are doing natural gas research.
the robots are comingon a windy morning in California's Salinas Valley, a tractor pulled a wheeled, metal contraption over rows of budding iceberg lettuce plants.
Researchers are now designing robots for these most delicate crops by integrating advanced sensors, powerful computing, electronics, computer vision, robotic hardware and algorithms,
as well as networking and high precision GPS localization technologies. Most agrobots won't be commercially available for at least a few years.
Farmers say farm robots could provide relief from recent labor shortages, lessen the unknowns of immigration reform,
so the robots can come and alleviate some of that problem, "said Ron Yokota, a farming operations manager at Tanimura & Antle,
Another company, San diego-based Vision Robotics, is developing a similar lettuce thinner as well as a pruner for wine grapes.
The pruner uses robotic arms and cameras to photograph and create a computerized model of the vines,
whose movement is directed through an optical sensor; it allows the robot to make a choice based on fruit color, quality and size.
The berries are plucked and placed on a conveyor belt, where the fruit is packed by a worker.
Futurist Fixes 1. Non Human (Robotic) Transportation: The same drone technology that the U s. military is using in Afghanistan could be put to use in the United states to transport goods between locations safer and faster than human drivers.
This could potentially free up roadways for humans as robot drivers could take a different route,
as covered in the November-December 2009 issue of THE FUTURIST. The U s. military hopes to soon use drones for cargo transportation and refueling.
This is certainly a realistic hope according to Missy Cummings, director of the Humans and Automation Lab at MIT.
soldiers guarding borders may see an army of remotely controlled robots rushing toward them. Cummings reports that oeseveral U s. government agencies are seriously considering how to use unmanned vehicles in first strike or initial invasion settings.
we send in robots on the beach and let the robots take the fire, and then set up a logistics camp
so that Marines could go in. If a robot can launch an invasion, how long before they re delivering our goods and services automatically?
Check out clips: oebig Dog Robot, The Stanley self-driving car (originally covered in THE FUTURIST in May-June 2006.
irobot Packbot, covered in THE FUTURIST, March-April 2007.2. Air-powered Cars and trains: As we featured in THE FUTURIST, September-October 2008,
go-karts sporting air-powered engines whizzed around a racetrack in a test of mechanical engineering students prowess at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova scotia.
but conventional power sources such as batteries are too big and eventually lose charge. In the future, nanodevices could use zinc oxide nanowires that draw energy from vibrations such as from the flow of blood
the capsules would contain thousands of microscopic robots called nanorobots. These would be in the range of a billionth of a meter in size
They would be robotic in that they would be programmed to carry out complex and specific functions in three-dimensional space.
The gadolinium-powered robots would make sure that the person body was absorbing the energy safely and consistently.
Freitas has two other nanobot solutions. oenutribots floating through the bloodstream would allow people to eat virtually anything, a big fatty steak for instance,
A nanobot Dr. Freitas calls a oelipovore would act like a microscopic cosmetic surgeon, sucking fat cells out of your body and giving off heat,
Futurist Fixes 1. Telemedicine and Robotic Surgery. As originally covered in the FUTURIST: Allison Okamura of the Johns hopkins university Department of Mechanical engineering says the real potential of robotic surgery
or rather computer-enhanced surgery is to reduce the impact of surgeries (make them less invasive,
Haptic systems are a particularly promising area of research in the field of robotics. Haptics involve making robotic surgical instruments more sensitive to human touch and,
reciprocally, allowing robot tools to convey sensory tactile data to the doctors who wield them.
Okamura and her team have developed a haptic system that helps doctors view how much pressure their robotic instruments are applying to a given area.
This sort of research will enable surgeons to better perform minimally invasive surgeries. Surgical robots can also photograph,
survey and collect data in ways that humans cannot and give surgeons a better sense of how the operation went,
after the fact. oewhen you do assisted robot surgery, you re already tracking the tools that are inside the patient,
says Okamura. oeyou can have force-sensors and other ways of examining force, and then you re acquiring data at the same time that you re doing the procedure,
You can model tissue health based on the data you acquired during operation by the robot.
and heartbeat of the patient via sensors embedded in the catheter that had been inserted into the patient heart.
The device uses wireless sensors to constantly monitor patients and check environmental factors in the patients home
But, as geneticist and open-source medicine evangelist Andrew Hessel wrote in the January-February 2010 issue of THE FUTURIST, oethanks to rapidly moving technologies like synthetic biology,
It the ideal technical foundation for open-source biotechnology. Moreover synthetic biology drops the cost of doing bioengineering by several orders of magnitude.
Low-cost sensors, clever software and advancing computer firepower are opening the door to new uses in energy conservation, transportation, health care and food distribution.
sometimes called the Internet of things or the Industrial Internet. Yet it takes time for the economics
The role of sensors once costly and clunky, now inexpensive and tiny was described this month in an essay in The New york times by Larry Smarr, founding director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information technology;
he said the ultimate goal was oethe sensor-aware planetary computer. That may sound like blue-sky futurism,
combining sensors, machine learning and Web technology. It senses not just air temperature, but the movements of people in a house, their comings and goings,
Across many industries, products and practices are being transformed by communicating sensors and computing intelligence. The smart industrial gear includes jet engines,
Computers track sensor data on operating performance of a jet engine, or slight structural changes in an oil rig, looking for telltale patterns that signal coming trouble.
SENSORS on fruit and vegetable cartons can track location and sniff the produce warning in advance of spoilage,
Computers pull GPS data from railway locomotives, taking into account the weight and length of trains, the terrain and turns,
Hacking a building offers speed to market, which can translate to more cost effective and less risky projects because it is quicker to convert an existing building than to design,
shared data centers or stadium-sized recreational facilities that can be shared by tenants and the public. oethe building owner can perform hacks as incentives for existing tenants to remain,
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