2011-04-30

WYSIPS Photovoltaic Surface Charges Your Phone Without a Charger





The WYSIPS Company was formed in 2009. It is part of Sunpartner Group’s affiliates. It commercializes WYSIPS’® (What You See Is Photovoltaic Surface) patent.

Technology
WYSIPS technology is the combination of micro lenses with PV cells together on which we apply image stripes and transparent stripes. The lenses concentrate exterior light on the transparent parts to allow the PV cells to capture solar energy. The lenses transform the image for the observer depending on the programmable viewing angles.

The technology is protected by generic international patent. www.wipo.int



 WYSIPS Technology does not alter the structure of the surface:
WYSIPS Technology consists of a flexible transparent lenticular film onto which extremely thin photovoltaic strips (in the region of one micron) have been deposited, thereby creating a flexible photovoltaic film which, from some angles, becomes totally transparent. Bonded to an LCD screen, for instance, it transforms the digital image without altering its definition or brilliance.


YouTube - 2011 International CTIA WIRELESS: WYSIPS Charges Your Phone Without a Charger

WYSIPS's e-tech entry shows how their technology uses solar energy to charge your phone through a photovoltaic film on top of your phone screen. Watch WYSIPS' President Ludovic Deblois demo of their product.



YouTube - Wysips Solar Charging Touchscreen

A first look at a solar charing touchscreen. Imagine being able to charge your phone continuously from the sun or from a nearby light.



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2011-04-29

GoQBot a Rolling Robot



Caterpillars inspire new movements in soft robots

Some caterpillars have the extraordinary ability to rapidly curl themselves into a wheel and propel themselves away from predators. This highly dynamic process, called ballistic rolling, is one of the fastest wheeling behaviours in nature.

Researchers from Tufts University, Massachusetts, saw this as an opportunity to design a robot that mimics this behaviour of caterpillars and to develop a better understanding of the mechanics behind ballistic rolling

[...]

To simulate the movement of a caterpillar, the researchers designed a 10cm long soft-bodied robot, called GoQBot, made out of silicone rubber and actuated by embedded shape memory alloy coils. It was named GoQBot as it forms a “Q” shape before rolling away at over half a meter per second.

YouTube - Rolling caterpillar 1

Video showcasing robots that mimic how caterpillars 'ballistically' fire and roll themselves away from predators.





[... ] In a report published online April 26 in Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, Huai-Ti Lin, Gary Leisk and Barry Trimmer of Tufts University report that their GoQBot mimics two caterpillar modes of locomotion: inching along like a worm or ballistically rolling at comparatively high speeds. (Unlike a caterpillar, the GoQBot rolls forward, not backward.) The group was funded by the DARPA ChemBots program, a military effort to design flexible robots that can gain access to tight spaces.



Crawling robots typically have many coordinated joints that slow them down, says Satyandra Gupta, director of the Maryland Robotics Center at the University of Maryland in College Park. While good at wriggling through tight spaces, these crawlers plod along in open terrain.

But a crawling robot that turns itself into a wheel can really move. “Once you get into a ball and rolling, you get dramatic increases in speed,” says Gupta, who was not involved in the research. “This is an exciting development.”

Robots similar to GoQBot may someday aid in search and rescue operations that require both crawling through tight, dangerous spaces and moving across flat ground, says Huai-Ti Lin, who created GoQBot as a graduate student at Tufts University in Medford, Mass.




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2011-04-26

Monowheels Then and Now

Monowheel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A monowheel is a one-wheeled single-track vehicle similar to a unicycle. However, instead of sitting above the wheel, the rider sits either within it or next to it. The wheel is a ring, usually driven by smaller wheels pressing against its inner rim. Most are single-passenger vehicles, though multi-passenger models have been built.

Pedal-powered monowheels were built in the late 19th century; most built in the 20th century have been motorized. Some modern builders refer to these vehicles as monocycles, though that term is also sometimes used to describe motorized unicycles.

Today, monowheels are generally built and used for fun and entertainment purposes, though from the 1860s through to the 1930s, they were proposed for use as serious transportation.


The First Monowheel?
This elegant monowheel cycle- the word "bicycle" seems somehow inappropriate, though there are certainly two wheels involved- dates back to 1869. It was built by Rousseau of Marseilles.
Collected from: Motorwheels monowheels

THE DYNOSPHERE: 1932
The Dynosphere (or Dynasphere, in some sources) was invented Dr J H Purves. It differed from the other monowheel designs in that it was wide enough to stand up by itself, without the need for continuous balancing. The outside of the wheel was part of the surface of a sphere.

In the picture below, the son of the inventor is at the controls, and apparently having some difficulties in steering; leaning this monowheel to one side is clearly not going to be easy. The Dynosphere was reported to have reached 30 mph on this run, powered by a 2.5 hp petrol engine. Since the wheel was said to have weighed 1000 pounds, I have some doubts about these figures.

Collected from: Monowheels: Page 3


The Cover of "La Science et la Vie" N°69 - Mar 1923

 While it is unconfirmed, this cover painting is probably of the Cislaghi machine, given the date of 1923. The top picture in this section is from a much later issue of "La Science et la Vie"- they were recycling their old material, no doubt.

The table of contents describes it as "Un curieux monocycle automobile".

Collected from: Monowheels: Page 2

Welcome to Kerry McLean’s Machines | Inventor of the McLean Monocycle | Contact Us Today About Customizing Your Toy!

Kerry McLean is probably best known for his one wheel monocycle, the McLean Wheel and the Rocket Roadster.  In 2001, Kerry was fortunate to have survived a horrific crash with his V8 monocycle when on its virgin test run it began to wobble out of control and flipped through the air slamming Kerry into the pavement.  Afterwards, Kerry determined the cause of the crash, made numerous design changes and completely rebuilt the machine.  Today, Kerry continues to make improvements to the monocycle and he enjoys inventing and building other very cool things.


Ben Wilson Design

Ben Wilson is a 3D Industrial designer working with mass produced products and one off hand made commissions. His work has been extensively published and exhibited worldwide. 


[...] Over the years the myth of the monowheel has become an equal fascination. Since the 1860's many patents have been filed in the monowheel's name and today there are even rumors of a production monowheel in China, but as it stands there is nothing currently available. As we can't buy a monowheel we made one,The attraction of this project is venturing into the unknown. [...]
Collected from: Ben Wilson Design




Collected from: WheelSurf

monovelo - Home

Welcome to monovelo.com

We are happy that we can offer the newest and first human powered Monowheel.
It was used at the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympia 2008.


Collected from: monovelo - Home

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2011-04-24

3D Imaging by Surface-Plasmon Holography

Holograms Powered By Quantum Effects Can Show True Color From Any Angle | Popular Science

A new type of hologram harnesses a quantum effect and uses ordinary light to make 3-D still images. Future 3-D displays based on this technology would have no need for 3-D glasses or special screens.

The technique is based on the behavior of free electrons on a metal surface, according to researchers at the RIKEN Institute in Japan.

Holography sharpens up - physicsworld.com


This tasty looking apple is an image of a new type of hologram developed in Japan that exploits tiny vibrations in metallic surface known as "surface plasmons". The image holds its rich natural colours even as the viewer changes their position, unlike many existing holograms on the market. For this reason, the researchers believe that their innovation could lead to new display technologies such as smart-phone screens that can project lifelike 3D images.
[...]
To see the hologram, the researchers needed to illuminate the structure with white light to generate surface plasmons in the silver film. Plasmons are coherent electron oscillations that can be thought of as a quasiparticle that couples photons and electrons. By illuminating the hologram in three distinct directions, the researchers were able to generate plasmons corresponding to the red, green and blue features of the hologram.



Plasmon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In physics, a plasmon is a quantum of plasma oscillation. The plasmon is a quasiparticlequantization of plasma oscillations just as photons and phonons are quantizations of light and mechanical vibrations, respectively. 

Surface plasmon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Surface plasmons (SPs), are coherent electron oscillations that exist at the interface betwterface (e.g. a metal-dielectric interface, such as a metal sheet in air).

Schematic representation of an electron density wave propagating along a metal - dielectric interface. The charge density oscillations and associated electromagnetic fields are called surface plasmon-polariton waves. The exponential dependence of the electromagnetic field intensity on the distance away from the interface is shown on the right. These waves can be excited very efficiently with light in the visible range of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Surface-Plasmon Holography with White-Light Illumination - forex world | forex world

Surface plasmon hologram and its color reconstruction with white-light illumination. (A) The SPP hologram is illuminated by white light at a given angle ? in high-index medium. Surface plasmons of a selected color are excited and diffracted by the SPP hologram to reconstruct the wavefront of the object. (B) Dispersion curve of the SPP hologram in reconstruction as a function of the incident angle of white light. The 3D images of red, green, and blue cranes made of paper are obtained at different angles with white-light illumination. This curve was obtained through calculations based on Fresnel’s equations. (C) Reconstruction of a color object through SPP hologram. The hologram is illuminated simultaneously with a white light in three directions at different angles  for each.

One Per Cent: Quantum effect fuels colour-fast holograms



"Currently 3D TV receivers, 3D games machines and 3D movie theatre screens create an illusion using left and right eye images reconstructed by the brain," says Kawata. "We are creating an optical field in 3D from the actual object in natural colour - there is no illusion."

He hopes their technique will feed into research on new ways to make glasses-free 3D moving picture screens, as well as making holograms look more realistic.

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2011-04-23

Google's Renewable Energy Initiatives

Google Energy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Google Energy LLC is a subsidiary company of Google, which was created to reduce costs of energy consumption of the Google Group, amounting to 2.5 million dollars[1], and subsequently to produce and sell clean energy. The division also allows it to take advantage of projects funded through the philanthropic Google.org.


YouTube - Going Green at Google

Find out how Google is going green by improving operations, building tools that empower users, and investing in a clean energy future. Learn more at http://google.com/green



Official Google Blog: Investing in the world’s largest solar power tower plant

We’ve invested $168 million in an exciting new solar energy power plant being developed by BrightSource Energy in the Mojave Desert in California. Brightsource’s Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS) will generate 392 gross MW of clean, solar energy. That’s the equivalent of taking more than 90,000 cars off the road over the lifetime of the plant, projected to be more than 25 years. The investment makes business sense and will help ensure that one of the world’s largest solar energy projects is completed.

Brightsource Energy’s Solar Energy Development Center in Israel’s Negev desert



Renewable Energy for Data Centers

We are purchasing clean, renewable wind energy sufficient to power several of our large data centers in a continuing effort to green our operations. To date we have completed two agreements, both from NextEra Energy Resources. The first was for 114 megawatts of wind generation from the Story County II facility in Iowa, and the second for 100.8 megawatts of wind generation from the Minco II facility in Oklahoma. (See our announcements for Iowa and Oklahoma) We made these agreements through Google Energy LLC, an entity formed in December, 2009 that allows us to procure large volumes of renewable energy by participating in the wholesale market.
Collected from: Google Green


The wind farm, which began operation in December 2009, consists of 100 GE 1.5MW XLE turbines




Investing in a clean energy future

[...]
  • North Dakota wind farms. In May, we invested $38.8 million in two North Dakota wind farms that generate 169.5MW, enough to power 55,000 homes. It was our first project investment, and uses some of the latest wind turbine technology and control systems to provide one of the lowest-cost sources of renewable energy to the local grid.
  • Offshore wind transmission. In October, we made a development stage investment in a project to build a backbone transmission line off the Mid-Atlantic coast. The project will put in place strong, secure transmission, removing a major barrier to scaling up offshore wind. When finished, the 350-mile line will connect up to 6,000MW of offshore wind energy—enough to serve approximately 1.9 million households!



A clear windy day at the Ashtabula II wind farm





Google.org invests more than $10 million in breakthrough geothermal energy technology


Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) could supply thousands of times US energy needs


Mountain View, California (August 19, 2008) – In the continuing effort to develop electricity from renewable energy cheaper than from coal, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), through its philanthropic arm Google.org, announced $10.25 million in investments in a breakthrough energy technology called Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS). Today's announcement also includes funding for research on next-generation geothermal resource mapping, EGS information tools, and a policy agenda for geothermal energy.



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2011-04-22

Swarming Robots

YouTube - Robots with a mind of their own

Scientists are now building a new kind of robot capable of self-assembly and doing tasks too difficult or too dangerous for human beings.



Swarm intelligence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Swarm intelligence (SI) is the collective behaviour of decentralized, self-organized systems, natural or artificial. The concept is employed in work on artificial intelligence. The expression was introduced by Gerardo Beni and Jing Wang in 1989, in the context of cellular robotic systems.[1]

[...]

The application of swarm principles to robots is called swarm robotics, while 'swarm intelligence' refers to the more general set of algorithms. 'Swarm prediction' has been used in the context of forecasting problems.

Swarm robotics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Swarm robotics is a new approach to the coordination of multirobot systems which consist of large numbers of mostly simple physical robots. It is supposed that a desired collective behavior emerges from the interactions between the robots and interactions of robots with the environment. This approach emerged on the field of artificial swarm intelligence, as well as the biological studies of insects, ants and other fields in nature, where swarm behaviour occurs.


Symbiotic Evolutionary Robot Organisms (SYMBRION)



[...]  such artificial organisms will become self-configuring, self-healing, self-optimizing and self-protecting from hardware and software points of view. This may lead not only to extremely adaptive, evolvable and scalable robotic systems, but might also enable the robot organisms to reprogram themselves without human supervision; to develop their own cognitive structures and, finally, to allow new functionality to emerge: the most suitable for the given situation.


EPFL - Laboratory of Intelligent Systems (LIS) - Prof. Dario Floreano



The SMAVNET project aims at developing swarms of flying robots that can be deployed in disaster areas to rapidly create communication networks for rescuers. Flying robots are interesting for such applications because they are fast, can easily overcome difficult terrain, and benefit from line-of-sight communication.


Autonomous Swarming Robots Can Skim Sea Surface, Collecting Oil As A Team | Popular Science



Swarms of autonomous, solar-powered towel-bots, based on a nanowire mesh, could help those oil-eating microbes clean up the Gulf of Mexico. The “Seaswarm” robot moves like a tank in water, using a conveyor belt to roll over the ocean’s surface.


Robot Swarms Could Help Search for Life in Martian Caves | Wired Science | Wired.com



Autonomous swarming robots, programmed to search like honeybees, could be the best strategy to explore caves on Mars that may harbor life.


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2011-04-18

Quantum Teleportation Breakthrough

Fox News - Fair & Balanced

Quantum Leap: Scientists Teleport Bits of Light - FoxNews.com


Physicists used this complex lab setup to teleport quantum packets of light from one place to another.


Our world is getting closer to "Star Trek" every day
.
Scientists announced Wednesday they've been able to teleport special bits of light from one place to another -- "Beam me up, Scotty," in other words. The advance doesn't necessarily mean we'll ever be able to teleport people, unfortunately, but it does represent some pretty mind-bending physics.





Quantum teleportation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Quantum teleportation, or entanglement-assisted teleportation, is a process by which a qubit (the basic unit of quantum information) can be transmitted exactly (in principle) from one location to another, without the qubit being transmitted through the intervening space. It is useful for quantum information processing, however it does not immediately transmit classical information, and therefore cannot be used for communication at superluminal (faster than light) speed. It also does not transport the system itself, and does not concern rearranging particles to copy the form of an object.


Teleportation


 [...] in quantum teleportation, two objects B and C are first brought into contact and then separated. Object B is taken to the sending station, while object C is taken to the receiving station. At the sending station object B is scanned together with the original object A which one wishes to teleport, yielding some information and totally disrupting the state of A and B. The scanned information is sent to the receiving station, where it is used to select one of several treatments to be applied to object C, thereby putting Cinto an exact replica of the former state of A.
Collected from: Teleportation





Quantum Teleportation Is a Reality - PCWorld

[...] the researchers developed a "broadband, zero-dispersion teleportation apparatus" and a whole new set of "hybrid protocols involving discrete- and continuous-variable techniques in quantum information processing for optical sciences,"[...]
The research was led by University of Tokyo researchers from the Department of Applied Physics, with some intercontinental assistance from the Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology at the University of New South Wales.



University of New South Wales, Sydney, AustraliaUNSW: The University of New South Wales - Sydney Australia - News - Quantum teleporter breakthrough 


"One of the limitations of high-speed quantum communication at present is that some detail is lost during the teleportation process. It’s the Star Trek equivalent of beaming the crew down to a planet and having their organs disappear or materialise in the wrong place. We’re talking about information but the principle is the same – it allows us to guarantee the integrity of transmission. 
"Just about any quantum technology relies on quantum teleportation. The value of this discovery is that it allows us, for the first time, to quickly and reliably move quantum information around. This information can be carried by light, and it’s a powerful way to represent and process information. Previous attempts to transmit were either very slow or the information might be changed. This process means we will be able to move blocks of quantum information around within a computer or across a network, just as we do now with existing computer technologies. 
"If we can do this, we can do just about any form of communication needed for any quantum technology."




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2011-04-11

Green Algae Could Help Clean Up Nuclear Waste

Fox News - Fair & BalancedAlgae Could Be Key to Cleaning Up Nuclear Accident Sites - FoxNews.com


Algae can secrete biofuels and pump out biologic drugs, and now researchers think it could help clean up radioactive accidents like the one unfolding at Japan's Fukushima nuclear facility.
A Northwestern University researcher has identified a certain kind of common algae, known as Closterium moniliferum, that has a unique penchant for sequestering strontium into crystals, a trick that could help remove the dangerous radioactive isotope strontium-90 from the environment.



Pond Alga Could Help Scientists Design Effective Method for Cleaning Up Nuclear Waste: McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern


The crescent-shaped, single-celled organism studied by Joester and his colleagues naturally makes biominerals that include non-radioactive strontium, and it can differentiate strontium from calcium -- a rare feat. The researchers want to learn more about this selectivity because calcium is present in far greater abundance than strontium in nuclear waste, but calcium is harmless. By concentrating the radioactive strontium (Sr-90) in the form of solid crystals with very low solubility, the dangerous high-level waste could be isolated from the rest and dealt with separately.

[...]

Joester, Krejci, Finney and Vogt all are authors of the paper, titled “Selective Sequestration of Strontium in Desmid Green Algae by Biogenic Co-precipitation with Barite.”

What’s the Context: The danger of strontium-90 is that it is chemically similar to calcium, and so can be taken up into milk, bones, and other tissues. Nuclear waste and spills can contain significant amounts of strontium; C. moniliferum is especially helpful because it can precipitate strontium but leave calcium alone (calcium is different enough from barium that the bacteria doesn’t crystallize it).

Not So Fast: Scientists don’t yet know how well the algae can withstand radioactivity, which could potentially put a damper on this clean-up method. Now, the scientists would like to find ways of increasing sulphate levels in the environment, which may in turn increase the ability of the algae to crystallize strontium.

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