Showing posts with label innovation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label innovation. Show all posts

2013-06-15

Google's 'Project Loon'

Meet Google's 'Project Loon:' Balloon-powered 'net access | Crave - CNET

The search giant wants to give everyone on earth Internet access, and it has a high-flying idea for how to accomplish it.


Google has officially announced "Project Loon," its plan to connect the entire world to the Internet that uses a decidedly 19th century technology: Balloons.

Official Blog: Introducing Project Loon: Balloon-powered Internet access

We believe that it might actually be possible to build a ring of balloons, flying around the globe on the stratospheric winds, that provides Internet access to the earth below. It’s very early days, but we’ve built a system that uses balloons, carried by the wind at altitudes twice as high as commercial planes, to beam Internet access to the ground at speeds similar to today’s 3G networks or faster. As a result, we hope balloons could become an option for connecting rural, remote, and underserved areas, and for helping with communications after natural disasters. The idea may sound a bit crazy—and that’s part of the reason we’re calling it Project Loon—but there’s solid science behind it.



Loon for All – Project Loon – Google

The Technology

Project Loon balloons float in the stratosphere, twice as high as airplanes and the weather. They are carried around the Earth by winds and they can be steered by rising or descending to an altitude with winds moving in the desired direction. People connect to the balloon network using a special Internet antenna attached to their building. The signal bounces from balloon to balloon, then to the global Internet back on Earth.

The Pilot Test

Project Loon starts in June 2013 with an experimental pilot in New Zealand. A small group of Project Loon pioneers will test the technology in Christchurch and Canterbury.


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2013-05-03

Controlled Flight of Insect-Scale Robot

BBC News - Robotic insect: World's smallest flying robot takes off

Scientists in the US have created a robot the size of a fly that is able to perform the agile manoeuvres of the ubiquitous insects.
This "robo-fly", built from carbon fibre, weighs a fraction of a gram and has super-fast electronic "muscles" to power its wings.






Robotic insects make first controlled flight — Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences


Cambridge, Mass. - May 2, 2013 - In the very early hours of the morning, in a Harvard robotics laboratory last summer, an insect took flight. Half the size of a paperclip, weighing less than a tenth of a gram, it leapt a few inches, hovered for a moment on fragile, flapping wings, and then sped along a preset route through the air.

Like a proud parent watching a child take its first steps, graduate student Pakpong Chirarattananon immediately captured a video of the fledgling and emailed it to his adviser and colleagues at 3 a.m.—subject line, "Flight of the RoboBee."

"I was so excited, I couldn't sleep," recalls Chirarattananon, co-lead author of a paper published this week in Science.

Robotic insects make first controlled flight

The RoboBees project "provides a common motivation for scientists and engineers across the university to build smaller batteries, to design more efficient control systems, and to create stronger, more lightweight materials," says Harvard engineering professor Robert J. Wood. "You might not expect all of these people to work together: vision experts, biologists, materials scientists, electrical engineers. What do they have in common? Well, they all enjoy solving really hard problems." (Credit: Kevin Ma and Pakpong Chirarattananon, Harvard University.)

The demonstration of the first controlled flight of an insect-sized robot is the culmination of more than a decade's work, led by researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard.

"This is what I have been trying to do for literally the last 12 years," says Robert J. Wood, Charles River Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences at SEAS, Wyss Core Faculty Member, and principal investigator of the National Science Foundation-supported RoboBee project. "It's really only because of this lab's recent breakthroughs in manufacturing, materials, and design that we have even been able to try this. And it just worked, spectacularly well."

Controlled Flight of a Biologically Inspired, Insect-Scale Robot

Science
Vol. 340 no. 6132 pp. 603-607
DOI: 10.1126/science.1231806

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2013-05-01

Printable Robots

MIT Project Aims to Deliver Printable, Mass-Market Robots | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

Insect printable robot. Photo: Jason Dorfman, CSAIL/MIT
[...] MIT announced a new project, “An Expedition in Computing Printable Programmable Machines,” that aims to give everyone a chance to have his or her own robot.

MIT CSAIL Project Could Transform Robotic Design and Production | CSAIL

It currently takes years to produce, program and design a functioning robot, and is an extremely expensive process, involving hardware and software design, machine learning and vision, and advanced programming techniques. The new project would automate the process of producing functional 3-D devices and allow individuals to design and build functional robots from materials as easily accessible as a sheet of paper.

“Our vision is to develop an end-to-end process; specifically, a compiler for building physical machines that starts with a high level of specification of function, and delivers a programmable machine for that function using simple printing processes,” said Rus.




Science Nation - Printable Robots Designed to be Consumer-friendly, Inexpensive - YouTube

"This research revolutionizes the design and manufacturing of robots, with a profound potential impact on society," says Ralph Wachter, a program director in the NSF Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering. "It would remove barriers to manufacturing robots, making it possible for average citizens to customize and manufacture their own robots to meet their needs. This opens the door to great possibilities."



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2013-04-06

IntelliCap: personalizable drug delivery and non-invasive gut health testing

Non-invasive gut health testing breakthrough

NIZO food research and biotech pioneer Medimetrics are bringing this a step nearer, using the latest micro-electronics. They have joined forces to create a means of sampling and mapping content from the small intestine to identify its microbiological composition, in a non-invasive way.
Using the IntelliCap system, an intelligent capsule developed by Medimetrics (a company pioneered by Philips and now based in The Netherlands, Germany and the USA), it will be possible to take samples in vivo, at targeted locations, in a non-invasive way and, importantly, away from a clinical setting.  IntelliCap is already being successfully used by the pharmaceutical industry for the targeted and controlled delivery of drugs in the human gastrointestinal tract.

Home - Medimetrics


Medimetrics IntelliCap

Medimetrics is the pioneer and global leader in electronic oral drug delivery. The company has created the IntelliCap system – the world’s first intelligent oral drug delivery and monitoring system. This flagship product is used to provice services and technology access to companies exploring controlled delivery and measurement of body conditions within the gastro-intestinal tract.

IntelliCap - personalizable drug delivery | Philips Innovation Services


Challenge: 
Personalizable oral drug delivery has the potential to improve the therapeutic effects of existing drugs and to reduce side effects. It could even enable new types of drugs that can be delivered exactly to the required place in the body.
Solution: 
IntelliCap’s developers turned to Philips Innovation Services for support from idea to initial small scale production in several areas: design and development of the capsule, the portable unit worn by the trial subject and the PC-based control center.


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2013-03-23

Lab-Made Body Parts

Science Fiction Comes Alive as Researchers Grow Organs in Lab - WSJ.com



Building a complex human organ in the lab is no longer a dream of science fiction. At London's Royal Free Hospital, a team of 30 scientists is manufacturing a variety of body parts, including windpipes, noses and ears. WSJ's Gautam Naik reports.  Photo: Gareth Phillips

[...]

The problem had been cracked by Dr. Taylor. She said that when human stem cells were put into a heart scaffold in 2010, they seemed to know just where to go. "They organized themselves in a way I didn't believe," said Dr. Taylor, who now works at the Texas Heart Institute but makes regular visits to Madrid to help with the experiments. "It's amazing that the [scaffold] can be as instructional as it is. Maybe we don't need to micromanage every aspect of this."
A person's heart grows in the womb where its cells receive the right mixtures of oxygen and nutrients and chemicals to grow into a working organ. To duplicate that process in a laboratory, scientists uses a device called a bioreactor, which has various tubes ferrying materials to the heart and whisking away waste products. The lab's bioreactor—a cylindrical device nearly a foot in diameter—is being designed by Harvard Bioscience Inc., HBIO +3.61% a maker of medical devices in Holliston, Mass. The machine will be ready for experiments in April, according to Dr. Aviles.

Dr. Aviles said he hopes to have a working, lab-made version ready in five or six years, but the regulatory and safety hurdles for putting such an organ in a patient will be high. The most realistic scenario, he said, is that "in about 10 years" his lab will be transplanting heart parts.

He and his team already have grown early-stage valves and patches that could be used some day to repair tissue damaged by heart attack.




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2013-03-22

IBM's liquid-based transistors point to human brain-like chips

IBM's Newest Invention Mimics the Human Brain on an Atomic Level - Adam Clark Estes - The Atlantic Wire

IBM scientists described a new kind of circuit in a paper published in Science on Thursday. There is no chip involve, per se. It's being described accurately as a "post-silicon transistor" and potentially paves the way for the most powerful and efficient computers the world has ever seen. This is possible largely because it mimics the behavior of another hyper-efficient computational marvel: the human brain.

IBM creates liquid-based transistors that can process data like the human brain | VentureBeat

The new technology is based on materials called “correlated electron oxides,” which can be combined with an ionic liquid, or a mixture where half of the molecules carry a positive charge and half are negative. When you apply a tiny ionic voltage to the liquid, the charged particles move to opposite sides of the surface of the oxide material. The charge leaves the oxide and goes into the liquid, changing its conductive state from an insulator to a metal, or from something that does not conduct electricity to something that does.

And it maintains its electrical state until another charge is applied. That part of the research is new and is particularly encouraging. IBM believes it can create non-volatile memory, or chips that save data whether electricity is on or off. It can also make logic chips that would use less power than today’s silicon-based semiconductor chips, which are the brains of everything electronic.

IBM News room - 2013-03-01 Made in IBM Labs: Scientists Discover New Atomic Technique to Charge Memory Chips - United States

The I.B.M. researchers hope that their approach could be used to build more brain-like computers.

The advantage of the new method is that it is both nonvolatile — it requires only a small amount of electricity to change the materials from one state to another, and they then remain in that state — and is potentially reversible, meaning that it could be used to build a device like a transistor.

The researchers noted that while the switching speed of the new materials might never match the raw speed of today’s transistors, their biological-like qualities might make them appropriate for building a new generation of sensors or memories.

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2012-11-22

Airbus' Eco-Climb Concept

Launching Airplanes from Catapults, Part 3: Airbus' Eco-Climb Concept - Core77


While many eyes in the commercial airline industry were undoubtedly watching the U.S. Navy's EMALS (Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System) testing, it is Airbus that has first stepped forward suggesting commercial applications. Earlier this year the manufacturer announced "Smarter Skies," a series of concepts and promotional videos revealing where they want to be by 2050.

One component in their plan is for an EMALS-like system, though they never directly refer to military subcontractor General Atomics' invention; instead the company calls it "Eco-Climb," writing that "Aircraft could be manoeuvred onto a track system and accelerated using either electro-magnetic motors built into the track or an inductive circuit within the aircraft itself." [...]


Eco-climb | Airbus, a leading aircraft manufacturer

How will it work?
Aircraft could be manoeuvred onto a track system and accelerated using either electro-magnetic motors built into the track or an inductive circuit within the aircraft itself.
Acceptable acceleration and deceleration limits of passengers would need to be determined, but the experience would be more akin to a comfortable children’s funfair ride rather than a high-octane white knuckle theme park.
The ultimate, albeit it very extreme, concept is to have a system that not only launches but also captures the aircraft, removing the need for landing gear.  This would require all airports to have the same system, to accommodate all routes along with alternative/diversion airports, and most likely is beyond 2050.

EMALS

Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) is a complete launch system designed to replace the existing steam catapult currently being used on aircraft carriers. The USS Gerald R. Ford, the first ship of the CVN-21 Future Aircraft Carrier Class, will use electromagnetic launch systems.
Source: EMALS



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2012-10-31

IBM's Nanotube Chip Breakthrough


I.B.M. research reports Nanotube Chip Breakthrough (IBM Innovation Center Silicon Valley)

John Markoff writes in the New York Times:

I.B.M.scientists are reporting progress in a chip-making technology that is
likely to ensure that the basic digital switch at the heart of modern
microchips will continue to shrink for more than a decade.

The advance, first described in the journal Nature Nanotechnology on
Sunday, is based on carbon nanotubes — exotic molecules that have long
held out promise as an alternative to silicon from which to create the
tiny logic gates now used by the billions to create microprocessors and
memory chips.

Ready for nanotech brains? IBM’s nanotube breakthrough gets us closer | VentureBeat

Carbon nanotubes are tiny wires that can conduct digital computer signals at five or 10 times the speed of traditional silicon chips. They have been around since the 1990s, but researchers have had a tough time getting them to behave. When they try to line these wires together in a useful grid as part of a computer design, the wires have a tendency to behave like wet spaghetti noodles.




Ready for nanotech brains? IBM’s nanotube breakthrough gets us closer | VentureBeat


[...] For the first time since research began on these carbon nanotubes, IBM has succeeded in placing them with near-perfect accuracy on the surface of a silicon chip in order to make electronic circuits.

Guha said the accomplishment is big one, though there are several obstacles that still stand in the way of mass production.

If those challenges are met, then we will see a huge leap in computing performance, as microprocessors for everything from PCs to smartphones will be able to take advantage of the technological advance. They could have applications in integrated circuits, energy storage and conversion, biomedical sensing, and DNA sequencing.

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2012-09-30

Wall-Ye Wine Robot

Meet Wall-Ye: The French grape-picking robot which can work day and night - and may well put vineyard workers out of a job | Mail Online

It takes on chores such as pruning and de-suckering - removing unproductive young shoots - while collecting valuable data on the health and vigour of the soil, fruit and vine stocks.

Watch a French Vineyard-Tending Robot in Action - Video Interlude - Eater National

[...] Wall-Ye, a vineyard-tending robot being developed in France. Wall-Ye costs a hefty €25,000 (US $32,000), but for that price, according to the AFP, it can "move from vine to vine, recognise plant features, capture and record data, memorise each vine, synchronise six cameras and guide its arms to wield tools." The solar-powered Wall-Ye can prune 600 vines per day and even collect data on soil and fruit. It even has an anti-theft device that causes the hard drive to self-destruct if the GPS detects it's been removed from the vineyard.
[...]




Wall-Ye wine robot takes bow in Burgundy | My Sinchew


Christophe Millot (R) and Guy Julien pose in vineyards with the Wall-Ye V.I.N. robot that they created on September 13, 2012 near Chalon-sur-Saone. Photo courtesy: AFP

Sales demonstrations are about to begin, and big name French vintners like Bordeaux's First Growth Chateau Mouton-Rothschild have offered their vineyards as a venue for the 20-kilogramme (44-pound) robot to put on its show.

Wall-Ye draws on tracking technology, artificial intelligence and mapping to move from vine to vine, recognise plant features, capture and record data, memorise each vine, synchronise six cameras and guide its arms to wield tools.

White with red trim, 50 centimetres (20 inches) tall and 60 wide, it also has an in-built security mechanism is designed to thwart would-be robot snatchers.

"It has a GPS, and if it finds itself in a non-designated vineyard, it won't start. It also has a gyroscope so it knows if it's been lifted off the ground," Millot said.


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2012-08-26

Wood Pulp, World's New Wonder Material

Why wood pulp is world's new wonder material - tech - 23 August 2012 - New Scientist

Nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC), which is produced by processing wood pulp, is being hailed as the latest wonder material. Japan-based Pioneer Electronics is applying it to the next generation of flexible electronic displays. IBM is using it to create components for computers. Even the US army is getting in on the act, using it to make lightweight body armour and ballistic glass.

[...]

So why all the fuss? Well, not only is NCC transparent but it is made from a tightly packed array of needle-like crystals which have a strength-to-weight ratio that is eight times better than stainless steel. Even better, it's incredibly cheap.



Nanocellulose: A cheap, conductive, stronger-than-Kevlar wonder material made from wood pulp | ExtremeTech

What’s brown and sticky, lightweight, flexible, stronger than steel, stiffer than Kevlar, and conducts electricity? Nanocellulose. Oh, isn’t actually brown and sticky either: it’s transparent.

Nanocellulose is a new wonder material that is simply plant matter that has been carefully smashed to pieces, and then reformed into neatly-woven nanoscale crystals and fibers. You generally start with wood pulp, remove any non-cellulose impurities (such as lignin) using a homogenizer, and then gently beat the mixture to separate each of the cellulose fibers. Depending on the exact process used, these fibers then form into a thick paste (pictured above) of needle-like crystals (2nm wide, hundreds of nanometers long, below left), or a spaghetti-like structure of cellulose fibrils (below right).



Nanocellulose - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nanocellulose or microfibrillated cellulose (MFC), is a material composed of nanosized cellulose fibrils with a high aspect ratio (length to width ratio). Typical lateral dimensions are 5–20 nanometers and longitudinal dimension is in a wide range from 10s of nanometers to several microns. It is pseudo-plastic. Moreover, nanocellulose exhibits the property of certain gels or fluids that are thick (viscous) under normal conditions, but flow (become thin, less viscous) over time when shaken, agitated, or otherwise stressed. This property is known as thixotropy. When the shearing forces are removed the gel regains much of its original state. The fibrils are isolated from any cellulose containing source including wood-based fibers (pulp fibers) through high-pressure, high temperature and high velocity impact homogenization (see manufacture below). Nanocellulose can also be obtained from native fibers by an acid hydrolysis, giving rise to highly crystalline and rigid nanoparticles (generally referred to as nanowhiskers) which are shorter (100s to 1000 nanometers) than the nanofibrils obtained through the homogenization route.


Forest Products Laboratory - USDA Forest Service

Nanotechnology

A leader in wood products research for over a century, the FPL is positioning itself to become the lead Federal research facility for the application of nanotechnology in forest products. Using structural, chemical, and mechanical evaluation techniques, interdisciplinary teams of scientists continue to expand FPL's nanotechnology research program.



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2012-08-12

The Audi R8 e-tron Electric Supercar

Audi e-tron - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Audi e-tron family is a series of electric and hybrid concept cars shown by Audi from 2009 onwards.

Audi R8 (road car) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Audi R8[4] (Typ 42)[6] is a mid-engine, 2-seater sports car,[4][7] which uses Audi's trademark quattro permanent all-wheel drive system.[4][8] It was introduced by the German automaker Audi AG in 2006.
[...]

R8 e-tron

The Audi e-tron concept car was unveiled at the 2009 Frankfurt motor show. Similar in appearance to the R8, but slightly smaller, it is powered by four independent electric motors,[28] two mounted within the centre of the front axle and the other two within the rear axle, each produces 79 PS (58 kW; 78 bhp) and 1,125 newton metres (830 lbf·ft) of torque. It produces a total of 317 PS (233 kW; 313 bhp) and a sceptical 4,500 newton metres (3,319 lbf·ft) of torque. However the proposed torque rating is the torque measured at the wheels, not at the output shaft—as is the industry standard, the true torque rating being around 678 newton metres (500 lbf·ft).

First video of Audi R8 e-tron setting Nürburgring record | Fox News


Back in June Audi set the fastest lap time of the Nürburgring-Nordschleife for a produced-based electric car using its upcoming R8 e-tron. The final time for the electric supercar, which was piloted by German race car driver Markus Winkelhock, was a brisk 8:09.099.
Today we have a video of the epic achievement, showing the R8 e-tron covering the 12.92 miles of the Nürburgring both from inside and outside the cabin. One of the highlights of the video is the sound of the car (or lack thereof), with tire and wind noise proving dominant over the whine of the electric motors.


Audi USA News : Home


From motorsport to series production: the digital rear-view mirror

- Intelligent camera/monitor system ensures an ideal view
- New technology goes into series production with the Audi R8 e-tron
- Successful debut in the Audi R18 Le Mans race car

Audi is set to make driving even safer with a new technology: the digital rear-view mirror delivers brilliant images and is due to enter small-scale production in the Audi R8 e-tron at the end of this year. This model – like the current Le Mans winners – has no rear window and hence no conventional rear-view mirror. Its high-tech successor is the digital rear-view mirror – a camera/monitor system.


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2012-08-11

'Meshworm' a Soft Autonomous Robotic Earthworm

Soft autonomous robot inches along like an earthworm - MIT News Office

Earthworms creep along the ground by alternately squeezing and stretching muscles along the length of their bodies, inching forward with each wave of contractions. Snails and sea cucumbers also use this mechanism, called peristalsis, to get around, and our own gastrointestinal tracts operate by a similar action, squeezing muscles along the esophagus to push food to the stomach.

Now researchers at MIT, Harvard University and Seoul National University have engineered a soft autonomous robot that moves via peristalsis, crawling across surfaces by contracting segments of its body, much like an earthworm. The robot, made almost entirely of soft materials, is remarkably resilient: Even when stepped upon or bludgeoned with a hammer, the robot is able to inch away, unscathed.

Sangbae Kim, the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, says such a soft robot may be useful for navigating rough terrain or squeezing through tight spaces.

Meshworm: The worm-like robot that can survive a hammer blow | Digital Trends

Researchers created the “artificial muscle” using nickel and titanium, producing a soft, flexible, mesh-like tube that stretches and contracts with heat.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Meshworm is its ability to withstand some pretty rough treatment. Clobber most robots with a hammer and it will likely result in some sparks, puffs of smoke and a major malfunction. Clobber Meshworm and it just continues crawling along as if nothing’s happened – as demonstrated in the video below. It can also survive someone stepping on it.


DARPA Funds MIT's Soft Meshworm Biomimcry Robot

Resilient Robots for the U.S. Military

Meshworm has the ability to survive a frightening degree of misuse, and that provides one clue into DARPA’s interest in the new technology.

As described by writer Jennifer Chu, the field of soft robotics is of growing interest to engineers. With little or no need for bulky hardware, soft robots are more durable and lend themselves to miniaturization more easily than their mechanical counterparts.

In terms of military purpose, soft robots like Meshworm could be air-dropped, launched or thrown over relatively long distances, land without damage, and set about crawling silently around, squeezing through tight openings and conducting surveillance.

Scientists Create Worm-like Robot That Can Inch Along the Ground

The Meshworm uses peristalsis, contracting and expanding different muscle segments, to inch across the ground. Image via MIT

But there might well be more benign uses as well. Kellar Autumn, a professor at Lewis and Clark College who studies biomechanics in robotics, told MIT that devices similar to the Meshworm could someday be useful for a wide range of applications, including both consumer technology and medical devices such endoscopes, implants and prosthetics. “Even though the robot’s body is much simpler than a real worm—it has only a few segments—it appears to have quite impressive performance,” Autumn said. “I predict that in the next decade we will see shape-changing artificial muscles in many products, such as mobile phones, portable computers and automobiles.”

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2012-07-11

The E-Volo Volocopter

Blade Runner: 18-Rotor "Volocopter" Moving from Concept to Prototype: Scientific American

Inventor and physicist Thomas Senkel created an Internet sensation with the October 2011 video of his maiden—and only—test flight of a spidery proof-of-concept 16-rotor helicopter dubbed Multicopter 1. Now the maker of the experimental personal aviation craft, the European start-up e-volo, is back with a revised "volocopter" design that adds two more rotors, a serial hybrid drive and long-term plans for going to 100 percent battery power.


e-volo | What is a Volocopter?


The e-volo volocopter is a completely novel, vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) manned aircraft, which cannot be classified in any known category. The fact that it was conceived of as a purely electrically powered aircraft sets it apart from conventional aircraft.

Through the use of its many propellers, the volocopter can take off and land vertically like a helicopter. A considerable advantage, apart from the simple construction without complex mechanics, is the redundancy of drives. This enables the safe landing of the volocopter even if some drives fail.

E-Volo | (VIDEO) E-Volo, after proof of concept let’s talk about production, VC Evolution! | Hybrid cars, green vehicles, electric bike: TechnologicVehicles.com, showroom and news

More than a one-off prototype, Thomas Senkel who founded the company has big ambitions, after presenting the prototype of the VC Evolution 1P at Aero shiw in Friedrichshafen he recently received the Innovation Award from the Lindbergh Foundation (LEAP), therefore the development of a production models is underway.


His flying machines are dubbed Volocopter, the 2-seater could emerge first, the VC Evolution 2P for which E-Volo announces a top speed of 100kph and 1 hour of range. The production model could be launched within 2 to 3 years after the test and development phases.




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