Virgin Hyperloop One in partnership with BMW’s design group released pictures of the interior of a pod that could be used to transport passengers in the UAE.
Category: transportation – Page 527
Can fish school cars in how to drive together?
In the not so distant future autonomous vehicles may rule the road. Could the ability of fish to swim together provide insights for engineers to make automated driving safer?
“One thinks about autonomous cars in isolation. But what is also important is the information which is being shared between cars,” Trevor Worthington, Shanghai-based vice president for product development at Ford Asia Pacific, told journalists this week at the Beijing auto show.
“For example, I’m a car driver now on the road, I don’t know whether it’s a dog or a person (in front of me). But that other car has a much better view and knows it’s a dog. So, if it was able to share information with me…” that could help avoid an accident, he said.
AI-powered location: A step closer to the future? (VB Live)
Cloud-based, AI-powered location technology is creating the highly accurate and always up-to-date maps that can revolutionize everything from autonomous cars to connected cities. To learn more about the application of data-enriched mapping to industries from retail to automotive, manufacturing, transportation and city planning, don’t miss this VB Live event!
Location is at the heart of everything: it’s the nexus between a device or an individual and the environment they interact with, and it can become the foundation of a smarter society. Location data is powered by cloud capabilities: global maps, traffic information and hundreds of millions of connected devices brought together to create the most up-to-date maps and power the “The Location of Things.”
Joining metals without welding
Welding is still the standard technique for joining metals. However, this laborious process carried out at high temperatures is not suitable for all applications. Now, a research team from the “Functional Nanomaterials” working group at Kiel University, together with the company Phi-Stone AG from Kiel, has developed a versatile alternative to conventional welding and gluing processes. Based on a special etching process, it enables aluminium and aluminium alloys to be joined with each other as well as with polymers, forming a durable and strong joint. They will present the prototype of a mobile joining unit at the Hannover Messe (23—27 April). They plan to commence mass production in future, after feedback from customers.
When welding, components are joined by locally melting them at the connection point. However, the high temperatures required for this influence the material in the so-called heat-affected zone, causing structural as well as optical changes. It also requires special safety precautions and appropriately qualified staff. In contrast, the process developed by the Kiel University research group led by Professor Rainer Adelung not only spares the materials to be joined, but it is also easier and more flexible to use, even in hard-to-reach places such as corners or upside down on the ceiling. In just a few minutes, metals can be permanently connected with each other, but also with polymers.
The team envisages areas of application such as ship, aircraft or vehicle production. The process is particularly well-suited for subsequently attaching components in existing constructions, for example, in the interiors of ships or cars, explained Adelung regarding possible applications. “The high temperatures of welding will destroy surfaces that have already been treated and painted, for example. Our process, on the other hand, works at room temperature without special protective measures,” said Adelung.
This Bike Is Powered By A Walking Treadmill
This bike is basically a treadmill on wheels.
GomSpace Successfully Commissions GOMX-4 Nanosats
STOCKHOLM (GomSpace PR) — As part of a mission to demonstrate interlink communication on nanosatellite tandem formation flights and data retrieval, including surveillance of the Arctic area, the Danish nanosatellite specialist GomSpace launched two nanosatellites in February.
Twelve weeks later, GomSpace for the first time showed the possibility of live data capture from the two nanosatellites in space at a press conference held in Aalborg, Denmark. At the same time, the press conference marked the official transition to the so-called demonstration phase, following the mission’s test phase. The latter has thus been successfully completed, and the mission is now ready to carry out its scheduled tasks.
On February 2, 2018, GomSpace launched two nanosatellites mounted on the Chinese missile Long March 2D from a launch station in the Gobi Desert. The objective of the two nanosatellites, based on GomSpace’s 6U platform, is in part to monitor the Arctic area. It is an area where ice has melted significantly in recent years, meaning that the area sees more and more activity in the shape of aircraft and ships, researchers and tourists.
The world’s largest plane with a wingspan bigger than a football pitch is preparing to take off
The largest plane ever built – backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and his company Vulcan Aerospace – is set to take full flight for the first time within months.
Known as Stratolaunch, the huge aircraft is so big that it requires two cockpits and six jet engines to take off.
The aircraft also has a wingspan of 385 feet, over a hundred more than the average football pitch.
Happy birthday Aubrey de Grey
Happy birthday to dr. aubrey de grey bigsmile
How many biologists does it take to make nontrivial progress on an unsolved mathematical problem for the first time in nearly 70 years? The answer is one, at least if the biologist is Dr. Aubrey de Grey, the pioneer of the repair approach to aging.
Yes, you read that right. Today, in occasion of Dr. de Grey’s birthday, we’ve decided to take a short break from biology and rejuvenation to tell our readers about the recent scientific achievement of one of the world’s most famous biogerontologists—unexpectedly, but pleasantly so, in the field of mathematics.
The chromatic number of the plane
Don’t worry if mathematics is not really your thing; we’ll keep it simple. Imagine that you have an infinitely large plane, where all points located at distance 1 from one another are connected by a straight line; any number of so-connected points, finitely or infinitely many, is called a graph. Further suppose that, for some reason, you wanted to color each point in such a fashion that no two connected points have the same color. How many different colors would you need to do this for the entire plane?