Lifeboat Foundation

• Bus manufacturer New Flyer has launched an autonomous technology program to develop and deploy self-driving and driver-assist technology for public transit agencies.
• In a release, New Flyer said it will focus on building connectivity and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) technology into public roadways. The company also said it will coordinate its efforts with federal agencies and industry groups working on automation, including the Society of Automotive Engineers.
• “Transit agencies across North America have been asking for progressive technology, regulators have shown commitment and support to technology advancement, and passenger confidence has been increasing as they experience autonomous technology firsthand,” New Flyer president Chris Stoddart said in a statement.

Most major technology research has focused on smaller autonomous vehicles (AVs), with companies eyeing shared autonomous fleets or ride-hailing services. But applying self-driving technology to public transit could hold huge potential, making bus service more energy efficient and safer. Buses travel on defined routes and can be coordinated with connected infrastructure, making them a potentially appealing option for cities fearful of further congestion from autonomous fleets.

Governments have already been exploring driverless shuttles, which carry fewer people than a full-size bus and run on shorter routes. Cities like Detroit, Las Vegas and Austin, TX have all run autonomous shuttle trials. Autonomous buses have gathered more research abroad, with pilots in China and the Netherlands. Volvo recently ran trials for an 85-passenger autonomous, electric bus at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.

Fans of science fiction and related genres have always been disappointed by real life. The future holds so much promise on paper, yet millions were disappointed upon reaching 2015 to find that hoverboard technology still eluded us. It’s not all bad, though – [abetusk] has developed a cyberpunk jacket so you can live out your grungy hacker fantasies in real life.

The effect is achieved with specially designed jacket patches. Nylon fabric is lasercut with artwork or lettering, and then placed over an electroluminescent panel. The fabric acts as a mask and is glued onto the EL panel, and the assembly is then attached to the back of the jacket with velcro.

Continue reading “Cyberpunk Jacket Is The Garment of Choice For The Streets of 2019” »

In a significant step toward large-scale hydrogen production, researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have developed a low-cost catalyst that can speed up the splitting of water to produce hydrogen gas.

Splitting water using electricity is a widely-explored method to generate hydrogen gas, a long sought-after clean power source for fuel cells, batteries and zero-emission vehicles. One of two major reactions involved in this process—called the Oxygen Evolution Reaction—is notoriously slow, restricting the overall efficiency. Researchers have focused on developing better catalysts — materials that can speed up the reaction while remaining neutral. The most efficient catalysts today are made from precious metals such as ruthenium and platinum, which are both expensive and rare.

An IISc team has now developed a low-cost catalyst by combining cobalt oxide with phosphate salts of sodium. The material cost is over two hundred times less expensive than the current state-of-the-art ruthenium dioxide catalyst, and the reaction rate is also faster, says Ritambhara Gond, PhD student at the Materials Research Centre (MRC), IISc, who is the first author of the paper published in Angewandte Chemie.

Continue reading “A superior, low-cost catalyst for water-splitting” »

Innolith AG, a world leader in rechargeable inorganic battery technology, has announces that it is developing world’s first 1,000 Wh/kg rechargeable battery. Under development in the company’s German laboratory, the new Innolith Energy Battery would be capable of powering an electric vehicle for over 1,000 km on a single charge. The new Innolith battery would also radically reduce costs due to the avoidance of exotic and expensive materials combined with the very high energy density of the system.

In addition to its range and cost advantages, the Innolith battery will be the first non-flammable lithium-based battery for use in electric vehicles. This battery uses a non-flammable inorganic electrolyte, unlike conventional EV batteries that use a flammable organic electrolyte. The switch to non-flammable batteries removes the primary cause of battery fires that have beset the manufacturers of EVs.

On Thursday, the city of Amsterdam announced its plan to replace all gasoline and diesel-powered cars and motorcycles with electric vehicles by 2030. The plan is an attempt to address unhealthy and alarming rates of air pollution in the city due to high traffic.

Germany has on Tuesday opened its first e-highway, where hybrid trucks connect to overhead power lines while driving underneath.

Germany spent 84 million euros developing the Siemens-made eHighway and a hybrid truck, which Siemens say will massively lower fuel costs.

“Tensegrity” robots could safely explore disaster zones, or even the surface of Saturn’s moon.

When traveling at five times the speed of sound or faster, the tiniest bit of turbulence is more than a bump in the road, said the Sandia National Laboratories aerospace engineer who for the first time characterized the vibrational effect of the pressure field beneath one of these tiny hypersonic turbulent spots.

“The problem is that these patches of turbulence are really fast and really small,” said researcher Katya Casper. “There are thousands of turbulent spots every second in hypersonic flow, and we need really fast techniques to study their behavior.”

The pressure field is key to understanding how intermittent turbulent spots shake an aircraft flying at Mach 5 or greater, Casper said. Hypersonic vehicles are subjected to high levels of fluctuating pressures and must be engineered to withstand the resulting vibrations.

Continue reading “High-speed experiments improve hypersonic flight predictions” »