HEMTT A3

HEMTT A3: Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck:

The HEMTT A3 (Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck) is according an Oshkosh press release the first production-ready, tactical military truck powered by an energy efficient diesel-electric drive system, called ProPulse®, that can increase fuel efficiency by 20 percent or more, depending on mission profile. And the onboard generator can deliver more than 100KW of military-grade AC power for external operations.

The ProPulse system uses a unique, modular series-hybrid arrangement to simplify the transmission of power to the wheels. The diesel engine powers an electric generator, which provides direct power to the wheels, eliminating the torque converter, automatic transmission, transfer case and drive shafts. The system has no batteries, using ultracapacitors for energy storage instead.

This advanced vehicle can climb a 60 percent grade, thunder across the most challenging terrain and achieve 65 mph on secondary roads. In short, the A3 allows fuel, equipment and supplies to keep pace with forward units to ensure you arrive first in every situation. The ProPulse® diesel-electric drive system provides power to the vehicle as well as 100 kW of clean, exportable military grade AC power. So you can get equipment where you need with one chassis – eliminating the need for additional trucks or trailers to transport external equipment and perform emergency response, homeland defense or battlefield support roles.

Read more at: http://www.hybrid-vehicle.org/hybrid-truck-hemtt.html

Watch this video: http://www.oshkoshdefense.com/defense/A3_video.cfm

Bicycle with No Pedals

The HMK 561 is a carbon fiber bike with special electrical properties that hold power right inside the frame. Carbon fiber is highly conductive so the designer uses it as a power distribution network instead of wires.

The power drives the lights and the motors in between the rims but get this… there’s regenerative braking. All that energy drives a system that turns the wheels using a counter-turning axel in lieu of gears and chains. Far fetched? No, because there’s already a prototype.

Check out its pictures at: http://www.yankodesign.com/2010/03/11/advance-carbon-fiber-electric-bike/

An ice-pack in your helmet to save your life

Brain-Cooling Motorcycle Helmet

An extraordinary new 'brain-cooling' motorcycle helmet could save thousands of lives each year. Called the ThermaHelm, the incredible piece of equipment comes with an inbuilt device that acts like an instant ice pack after a sudden impact. By cooling the brain it is thought the carbon fibre helmet can reduce the risk of long-term brain damage and save lives. The British creators will launch the £299 helmet in May this year.

Inventor and motorcycling enthusiast Jullian Preston-Powers said he has had an incredible response to the new design. Mr Preston-Powers. from Brighton, said he had an 'eureka' moment after sustaining an injury during a game of basketball.

After two years of developing the idea at the Sussex Innovation Centre, in Brighton, it is now set to hit the shelves this year. The helmet contains two lightweight chemical packs, which are built into the helmet lining. One pack contains water, the other ammonium nitrate. A sudden impact causes the two to mix and trigger a 'cooling' reaction. This reaction lasts up to 45 minutes, stabilising the temperature of the brain and improving the crash victim's chances of survival.

Wheelchair with Vision

This smart wheelchair has laser vision
Spletzer, an associate professor of computer science and engineering, recently received a five-year CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop a robotic wheelchair that navigates on its own, with no human guidance or remote control, through a crowded city.

Armed with high-fidelity lasers and detailed maps, the “smart” wheelchair will avoid stationery objects like parking meters and light poles as well as “random events” like pedestrians and bicyclists. It will transport users who may not be able to see or walk to their doctor’s appointments, to the pharmacy, to the grocery store.
Helping robots see with lasers

In order to “see” and respond to its environment as it navigates around a city, says Spletzer, a robot must possess two things: sensors that detect and recognize familiar landmarks and a database with maps that show where those landmarks will be.

Spletzer and his students have taken a cue from Google Street View, which allows Internet users to take virtual tours of distant cities, block by block and building by building, by looking at thousands of stored images. These images are of little use to robots equipped with lasers, says Spletzer, because robots do not see what humans see. But the concept is applicable to the robotic wheelchair. Spletzer and his students are fitting the robotic wheelchair with a low cost LIDAR (an acronym for light detection and ranging) laser similar to, but much less expensive than, those that enabled Little Ben to detect other vehicles, highway lane markers and the edge of the pavement. They have made high-fidelity, 3-D laser maps of portions of South Bethlehem and of the Stabler Arena parking lot on Lehigh’s Goodman Campus. The team’s robotic wheelchair, guided by LIDAR but not GPS devices, has traversed a 1-kilometer route and arrived at its destination to within an accuracy of 20 centimeters.

“We have a server vehicle drive around and make a hi-fi 3-D map of the environment,” says Spletzer. “The robotic wheelchair can download this map and navigate the environment, halfway in the real world, halfway in the virtual world.

“The robot identifies landmarks—trees, poles, building faces and corners—in the real world and looks for them in the laser map. Once it finds them, it will be able to accurately estimate its position in the real world. It doesn’t need GPS, because of the accuracy of the server vehicle maps and because of the LIDARs.”

Read more at: http://www.physorg.com/news177062541.html

Aircraft that can see for themselves

Aircraft that can see for themselves (w/ Video)
Australian researchers have made two important advances in the development of unmanned aircraft capable of seeing for themselves as they fly fast and low over dangerous terrain.

A team from the The Vision Centre and Queensland Brain Institute has developed highly effective new visual systems inspired by honey bees and how they navigate successfully around the landscape, despite their tiny brains.

The two innovations, one of which provides stereo vision to enable aircraft to see their way around obstacles in very low-level flight, and the other which controls the aircraft’s attitude by watching the horizon, offer light, low-cost, highly-efficient technologies for use in unmanned aircraft (UAVs).

Both will be unveiled for the first time at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, in St Louis, USA from October 11-15. Richard Moore and his colleagues at The University of Queensland node of the ARC Vision Centre, based at the Queensland Brain Institute, have developed a stereo system employing two cameras and two sophisticated, highly curved mirrors, for observing the terrain as it flows beneath the aircraft. The cameras feed back information on height and distance to the terrain and its obstacles in a steady flow.

“You know how things that are close seem to speed by, whereas things farther away seem to travel more slowly,” Richard said.

"Our design eliminates that distortion, enabling us to use the flow of optical data from all parts of the landscape in view to navigate the aircraft, even if it is moving very fast.”

Read more and see video at: http://www.physorg.com/news173621893.html

Air bags in back seat belts of SUV

Ford to put air bags into back seat belts of SUV

Ford's inflatable seat belts are designed for the rear seat. Air bags have long been mounted in the steering wheel, dashboard and sides of vehicles. Now, they're in the seat belts. Ford Motor Co. plans to introduce seat belt-mounted air bags in the back seat of the 2011 Ford Explorer sport utility vehicle, which will hit the market next fall. Ford says it's the first automaker to mass produce the technology.
The belts have a cylindrical air bag that stretches from the buckle to the shoulder and fits inside a pocket sewn into the belt. The car sends a signal that releases the bag, which inflates more gently than a front air bag, so it's safer for children.

Srini Sundararajan, the Ford engineer who was chiefly responsible for developing the device, says the wider belts and bags help distribute crash forces across the occupant's chest, so there's less chance of serious injury. It also supports the head and neck.

"The top two lifesaving devices today are the seat belt and the air bag. This combines them into one great feature," Sundararajan said. Ford has been working on the technology for a decade and had to overcome numerous challenges bringing it to market.

Front air bags are powered by a device that generates hot gas. They deploy very quickly because they need to cover a greater distance before they reach the driver or passenger. Seat belt air bags don't have that distance to cover, so they can deploy more gently, using cold gas technology, although Srini said they're still fully deployed in a tenth of a second.

Read more at: http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/providerarticle.aspx?feed=AP&date=20091105&id=10661000
Check out the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MN5htEaRk4A&feature=player_embedded

New technology to clean cabin air during flights

AirManager cleans cabin air

The global spread of viruses such as swine flu could be slowed by new air-sanitation technology on aircraft, claimed its UK developers.

The AirManager technology from Cheshire-based Quest International UK has completed trials with five European airlines. The units are now being prepared for installation across one European airline's entire fleet of Avro RJ aircraft. AirManager, which is being distributed internationally by BAE Systems, works using a patented non-thermal plasma technique known as CCFT (Close-Coupled Field Technology).

Inventor David Hallam, director of Quest International, explained a high-voltage coil in a dielectric arrangement generates the contained electrical field. This field destabilises compounds and materials in the air passing through it. A combination of high-voltage forces and oxidative stress within the field attacks inorganic and organic compounds at the molecular level and effectively strips them down to their component elements. Any inert particulate materials are then passed through a 3M-manufactured High Air Flow (HAF) filter, which has an electrostatic surface area designed to attract, capture and retain particles down to 0.1 micron in size. The air is cycled 30 times before it is released into the cabin area.

Hallam said AirManager can remove up to 99.999 per cent of all pathogens in a single pass and an even greater amount of airborne viruses can be destroyed in the same amount of time. A unit is also claimed to be able to eliminate volatile organic compounds and offensive cabin smells from the air. He added: 'It is important to show you are doing everything in your power to stop transmission on board. Swine flu is one pandemic; there will be others, and with international travel these things spread a lot faster than they would have historically. So anything that can cut down on that has got to be a good thing.'

Read the full article at: http://www.theengineer.co.uk/Articles/Article.aspx?liArticleID=313201

Bed that turns into wheelchair

Panasonic develops bed that turns into wheelchair
The invention is designed to help people with limited mobility maintain an independent lifestyle, the firm said in a statement. "Now, the user can join the family meal by converting the bed into a wheelchair and moving to the dining table without the need of assistance from other people," it said. Panasonic will exhibit the Robotic Bed at a home care and rehabilitation exhibition in Tokyo from September 29 to October 1, it said.
"It is still a concept model and we will not be selling it soon," said Panasonic spokeswoman Yuka Arii. "We plan to bring it to markets in or after 2015. But we don't know the price yet." Japan has one of the world's oldest populations and faces a constant shortage of care workers.
Read more at: http://www.japancorp.net/Article.Asp?Art_ID=22017

Harnessing the Energy Beneath Your Tires

Introducing MotionPower™: Harnessing the Energy Beneath Your Tires
One New Jersey Burger King recently equipped its drive-thru with a speed bump that harvests electricity from cars that pass by. The speed bump is part of a pilot project from New Energy Technologies, and if all goes well, drivers could see energy-harvesting speed bumps at drive-thrus, toll plazas and even shopping centres.

The speed bumps, or “MotionPower Energy Harvesters,” look much different from your typical concrete humps. The “bump” is actually flat, with long, skinny pedals running across the top. As cars drive over the speed bump, it pushes the pedals down and turns the gears inside. The spinning creates about 2,000 watts of electricity from a car moving at five miles per hour.

Energy created by the cars is instantaneous (like solar and wind power), meaning that speed bump developers must also figure out a way to store power for later use. To that end, developers at New Energy Technologies are currently experimenting with mini-flywheels (a device that stores energy by spinning), and also plan to look into supercapacitors and other energy-storing mechanisms. Eventually, once storage is perfected, the speed bumps could be used to power street lamps or even feed power directly to the grid.

New Energy Technologies Inc.
is the first public company to develop roadway technology to capture the kinetic energy of vehicles.

Advantages:
• Cost-effective -- easy to manufacture and low operating costs
• Simple and reliable mechanical configuration which is easy to maintain
• Ease of Installation
• Low-profile assembly can be mounted directly atop existing roadways with little or no modifications to roadways
• Modular scalable configuration
• Can be installed in virtually any location

Read more at: http://www.newenergytechnologiesinc.com/

Tyres with wood

Cheaper, more fuel-efficient tires? Wooden it be good
Oregon State University (OSU) are proposing replacing silica with microcrystalline cellulose derived from plant fiber as a reinforcing filler in the manufacture of rubber tires. The result could be a tire that would cost less, perform better and save on fuel and energy.

As part of their study the OSU researchers replaced up to about 12 percent of the silica used in conventional tire manufacture with microcrystalline cellulose - a micrometer-sized type of crystalline cellulose with an extremely well-organized structure. This decreased the amount of energy needed to compound the rubber composite, improved the heat resistance of the product, and retained tensile strength.

The study also showed that the new tire possessed comparable traction to existing rubber tires in wet, rainy conditions and actually decreased the rolling resistance of the product in high temperatures. This would improve the fuel efficiency of tires made with the new approach in hot weather. Cellulose fiber has been used for some time as reinforcement in some types of rubber and automotive products, such as belts, hoses and insulation – but never in tires, where the preferred fillers are carbon black, which is made from increasingly expensive oil, and silica, which is energy-intensive to process. Both products are also very dense and reduce the fuel efficiency of automobiles. Conversely microcrystalline cellulose is produced in a low-cost acid hydrolysis process.

The research team say that more research is needed to confirm the long-term durability of tires made using microcrystalline cellulose, but hopefully they’ll last longer and provide a smoother ride than these.

Visual time machine on your phone

Augmented reality: Visual time machine offers a glimpse of the past

The Palace of Venaria near Turin, Italy, and Winchester Castle in the United Kingdom have already benefited from the technology, which combines augmented reality (AR) content with location awareness on mobile devices to give visitors to historic and cultural sites a deeper, richer and more enjoyable experience. Other places of interest are also set for a virtual renaissance in the near future with a commercial version of the system being developed to run on smart phones.

Augmented reality allows people to see and discover much more than they would normally be able to by overlaying information and images in real time on photos and video taken using a mobile device. Innovative software matches the image being viewed with suitable AR content stored on a central server. “They can look at a historic site and, by taking a photo or viewing it through the camera on their mobile device, be able to access much more information about it,” explains Luke Speller, a senior researcher at BMT in the United Kingdom who oversaw development of the technology. “They are even able to visualise, in real time, how it looked at different stages in history,” he adds. The AR system is one component of a comprehensive mobile information platform for tourists developed in the EU-funded iTacitus project, which also created location-based services and smart itinerary-generating software to help users get the most out of any trip.

Virtual guide for augmented holidays
Visitors to historic cities provide the iTacitus system with their personal preferences - a love of opera or an interest in Roman history, for example - and the platform automatically suggests places to visit and informs them of events currently taking place. The smart itinerary application ensures that tourists get the most out of each day, dynamically helping them schedule visits and directing them between sites.

Once at their destination, be it an archaeological site, museum or famous city street, the AR component helps bring the cultural and historic significance to life by downloading suitable AR content from a central server.

See the video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbIioo09Ou4&feature=player_embedded
Know more at: http://itacitus.org/
Read more at: http://www.scientificcomputing.com/news-DS-Visual-Time-Machine-Offers-Glimpse-of-Past-081309.aspx

Design a car from scratch

For once- the community decides what goes into the car

Splitwheel is a groundbreaking project to design and build a new performance car based on your input. They are world's first virtual car company and YOU get to decide what sort of car they should build. Combined with entertaining content about cars to inform their decisions, Splitwheel is a revolutionary new experience for enthusiasts. But Splitwheel is not just an online experiment. Their partner, legendary British sportscar manufacturer Caterham Cars, will be turning the designs into reality.
You will be voting on all the key decisions that will shape the design of the vehicle; from styling and engine options to specification, equipment and everything in between!

To understand the concept see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CGygcEXZI0&feature=player_embedded
See more videos at: http://www.splitwheel.com/Content.asp?ContentID=14

While project splitwheel is currently on hold, another project is underway to build the car for the future.

C,mm,n (pronounced common) is an open community design project that is not only counting on its members to help design a car but is also tasking them with producing a whole new mobility solution to cope with the challenging demands of the future. The blueprints for the proposed electric car concept and the mobility concepts are freely available under an open source licence and contributions are welcome from anyone and everyone. "Generally, any new generation of car builds on existing models. Refinements in design result in a new car that surpasses its predecessor in all aspects: bigger, more powerful, safer and better-looking. C,mm,n abandons this working method completely. The concept of the development of c,mm,n is built around the society of the future, with the needs of the mobilist of 2020 in mind."

Read more on this at: http://www.gizmag.com/cmmn-car-mobility-concept-open-source/12349/?utm_source=Gizmag+Subscribers&utm_campaign=fbb9f0f7e7-UA-2235360-4&utm_medium=email

Wheelchair steered by brain waves

Toyota makes a wheelchair steered by brain waves:
Toyota and Japanese research foundation RIKEN have teamed up to create a revolutionary wheelchair steered by mind control. This remarkable development is one of the first practical uses of EEG (Electro-encephalogram) signals.
Designed for people with severe disabilities, the Toyota/RIKEN wheelchair is fitted with an EEG detector in the form of a electrode array skull cap, a cheek puff detector and a display that assists with control. To turn left, right and move forward, the driver simply thinks about the movement and the wheelchair instantly and seamlessly responds. To stop the wheelchair, the driver puffs his/her cheek. A detector on the face picks up the signal and immediately stops the wheelchair. This form of braking is necessary for safety reasons as a puff detector is more reliable than the EEG reader.

Why brain waves are difficult to work with
Previous attempts all around the world to use brain waves to control devices have only been partially successful. One of the biggest problems with EEG signals is that on the surface of the skull they are in the order of micro-volts (millionth of a volt) and prone to electrical noise. Another problem is that reliable and repeatable placement of EEG electrodes on specific areas above the brain is hard to achieve.

The breakthrough
Toyota and RIKEN have made a breakthrough in the field by refining the analysis algorithms, signal processing and noise elimination to the point that their device can detect discreet thought processes and use them to trigger events such as driving a wheelchair forward, left or right.

Check out the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VPY1d2t_FE&feature=player_embedded
Read more at: http://www.gizmag.com/toyota-wheelchair-powered-brain-waves/12121/

Life Without Cars? It's happening.

In German Suburb, Life Goes On Without Cars

VAUBAN, Germany — Residents of this upscale community are suburban pioneers, going where few soccer moms or commuting executives have ever gone before: they have given up their cars.

Vauban’s streets are completely “car-free” — except the main thoroughfare, where the tram to downtown Freiburg runs, and a few streets on one edge of the community. Car ownership is allowed, but there are only two places to park — large garages at the edge of the development, where a car-owner buys a space, for $40,000, along with a home.

As a result, 70 percent of Vauban’s families do not own cars, and 57 percent sold a car to move here. Vauban, completed in 2006, is an example of a growing trend in Europe, the United States and elsewhere to separate suburban life from auto use, as a component of a movement called “smart planning.”

In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency is promoting “car reduced” communities, and legislators are starting to act, if cautiously. Many experts expect public transport serving suburbs to play a much larger role in a new six-year federal transportation bill to be approved this year, Mr. Goldberg said. In previous bills, 80 percent of appropriations have by law gone to highways and only 20 percent to other transport.

In California, the Hayward Area Planning Association is developing a Vauban-like community called Quarry Village on the outskirts of Oakland, accessible without a car to the Bay Area Rapid Transit system and to the California State University’s campus in Hayward.

Passenger cars are responsible for 12 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in Europe — a proportion that is growing, according to the European Environment Agency — and up to 50 percent in some car-intensive areas in the United States.

Read full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/science/earth/12suburb.html?emc=eta1

Tourist Remover

Remove moving objects such as tourists or passing cars from your photos. Take multiple photos from the same scene and the “Tourist Remover” blends them into a composite photo without any interfering elements. Swiss software engineering company futureLAB released the new online tool. The removal algorithm is fully automatic and requires only 3-10 photos of the same object taken in succession. There is no need for tripods, it works well with hand-held shots.

“Tourist Remover” is part of the feature-rich Online Photo Manager www.snapmania.com and is free. snapmania is a new way to organize and share photos and offers the ease of use of PC-based applications but runs completely in a web browser. Free sign-up is available at www.snapmania.com/trm including 100 MByte of online storage for photos.

Travel from London to Timbuktu in a flying car!

The world's first bio fuelled flying car. Designed by a young British inventor, the Skycar enables its driver to pilot the vehicle at the mere touch of a button as though it were a microlite.
The team behind it calls the Skycar the world's first road legal biofuelled flying car.
The daredevil 42-day expedition will pass 4,000 miles (6,400 km) through France, Spain and Morocco, head into the Sahara by way of Mauritania and Mali, before returning home via Senegal. With the help of a parachute and a giant fan-motor, Neil Laughton plans to soar over the Pyrenees near Andorra, before taking to the skies again to hop across the 14-km (nine-mile) Straits of Gibraltar.
The ex-SAS officer then aims to fly over the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, above stretches of the Sahara desert and, well, wherever else the road runs out.
See the full article with video at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7821979.stm

Pay-As-You-Go : Airline Industry

Cross fertilization at its simplest!: Taking a cue from the cellphone industry, an upstart South African airline is selling flights by the minute and allowing customers to buy tickets and book flights via text message.

Airtime Airlines takes to the sky later this month, offering three flights a day from its base in Durban to Johannesburg, Cape Town and Port Elizabeth. Passengers purchase minutes much like they would for a prepaid cell phone and redeem them for a ticket. Fees are assessed according to the length of the flight - say, 75 minutes for the run from Durban to Johannesburg - and could save as much as half of what competing airlines charge.

Topping off accounts is where things get interesting. The cost for Airtime minutes can fluctuate, presumably according to promotions and market factors, so topping off becomes an exercise comparable to fuel hedging. Buy a big block of minutes when you think they're at their cheapest and you look smart, unless the price drops again the next day. Then again, it might go up. The price recently rose from 3 Rand to 5 Rand, meaning the cost of a round-trip flight from Durban to Cape Town climbed from about 750 Rand ($81) to 1,250 Rand (about $134). Still that's cheaper than the $200 it would cost on South African Airlines.


Check the details: http://blog.wired.com/cars/2009/01/new-airline-pla.html

Navigating Cities By Mood

Guidebooks and recommendations are all very well, but there's very little point in discovering a new activity, restaurant or shop if you're not in the right headspace to enjoy it. Enter I Feel London (or Toronto, or New York as is appropriate), a site that lets users search for things to do based on their mood...

Currently in beta, the I Feel sites bring a new spin to Google Maps. There's a map for nine moods covering such feelings as naughty, hungover, girly, sophisticated and broke. Andy Whitlock, I Feel's London-based founder, has kick-started each map by populating it with a handful of activities, with future contributions to be made by anyone who requests an invite.

A unique service in the travel industry check out site at: http://www.ifeellondon.com/