Terminator 2 is widely remembered for it’s inclusion of the metal shape-shifting villain T-1000. Seemingly impervious to bullets, explosives and fire the killer robot was capable of changing shape at will. Programmable materials, including metals, are of great interest to some scientists working in robotics and other fields for the endless possibilities they could offer....
Back in August we wrote about NASA’s project to send the first 3D printer into space. Originally scheduled to arrive at the International Space Station (ISS) last month, the 3D printer’s launch date was pushed back to September. Finally, today just before 02.00 a.m EDT, the Made in Space-designed 3D printer was launched on-board the SpaceX 4 Commercial Resupply Services ...
Converting waste to energy is one of our generation’s most fundamental ordeals to face. Air Products’ contribution, aware of that urge, decided to build and operate a waste-to-energy facility in Tees Valley, UK. It is the very first one built in the UK and the largest worldwide. Consequently, the expectations are impressive: up to 350,000 tons of non-recyclable landfill ...
Are any of you a fan of LEGO? Yes, it’s a standing ovation! You will happily acknowledge the masterpiece built by a 14 year-old: a real 3D printer, made of real LEGO. Yes, it works perfectly. Yes, we are serious. Creativity often finds its birth in need, a belief proven by this inventive engineer student, who absolutely wanted a 3D printer but sadly couldn’t afford it. T...
Fiam has designed a tool providing an ideal solution when large and medium batches of the same screws have to be tightened. The MCA device consists of a new screw feeding system, an air or electric nutrunner motor and a fastening slide. The system elaborated by Fiam will solve all customers’ needs, making it a great addition to the market. A highly customized solutio...
3D printed architecture is nothing new, we’ve written about 3D printed structures before such as Winsun’s success at printing 10 full-sized houses made of cement in 24 hours and WASP’s printer project that uses extruded mud and clay for low cost housing. Recently however, a team at UC Berkeley led by Associate Professor of Architecture Ronald Rael has taken a different r...
The shape-shifting liquid metal robot T-1000 captured all our imaginations the first time Terminator 2 was shown in cinemas, the actor Robert Patrick still has a cult following because of it. While not as eye-poppingly awesome as T-1000, researchers at the Tsinghua University in Beijing, China have created a self-powered liquid metal motor with shape-shifting characteris...
Austrian design group Livin Studio has built a system, nicknamed the Fungi Mutarium that turns edible fungal biomass, principally mycelium, into an unusual food product. The added wow factor of this idea is that the fungi used,Schizophyllum Commune and Pleurotus Ostreatus, are fed on sterilized plastic waste and transform it into a nutritional biomass humans can feed on....
Exploring the natural ability of cats to land on their feet is aiding researchers at Georgia Tech in the development of robots. The cat righting reflex, which results from an unusually flexible backbone and lack of a functional collarbone that allow cats to twist in midair, could significantly impact robot design and help to produce robots that are able to land softly on...
Tesla has selected Nevada, US as the site for its $5bn ‘gigafactory’, which will mass produce electric batteries in partnership with Panasonic. Other car battery systems have come on the market in recent times, but nothing on the scale of Tesla’s proposed production site, which is expected to produce up to 500,000 batteries annually. Once built the plant is expected to e...
NASA engineers at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, were recently testing a new kind of flying device: the GL-10 Greased Lightning. As per usual, the American government agency is trying to reach new heights in technology and this time they have decided to focus on electric propulsion and an unmanned aerial device. But they have chosen to make new things ...
Canadian firm, D-Wave Systems, continue to be put under the spotlight over their claims to have created the first ever quantum computer. However, this hasn’t stopped them from making some key sales. For the mean sum of $15m you can be one of the lucky few to own a D-Wave Two ‘quantum computer’, joining the likes of Nasa, Google and arms industry giant Lockheed Martin who...
Andrew Wilson over at Vision Systems has written a great article about the future of machine vision and its potential impact on the agricultural sector. Check out the article for insightful details on how the future of OEM components, 3D systems and robotics will influence efficiency and quality, changing the face of the industry for good.
Hello creativity, hello world innovation, hello excitement! Please meet the world’s first 3D printing pen: the 3Doodler by WobbleWorks! Produced in 30 different colors, compact, it is now easy to draw 3D objects within minutes, thanks to the 3Doodler! No computer / software nor technical skills are required! All you need is a fair amount of imagination and creativity to ...
The Swiss automotive think-tank Rinspeed, surfing on the favored concept of car sharing, produced the “microMAX”, a vehicle combining private and public use, over short distances, in a clever way. Thanks to the eco-Kit M, mobile and stationary applications can be converted to power, meaning the microMAX is fully electric. Linde Material Handling contributed to the enviro...
Compact. Hairy. Thick. Sticky. Unpleasant. Cool. We can see you, through the screen, pulling a face, smiling or even feeling a little cold. Why is it so? Because humans “feel” adjectives. On the contrary, robots have no sense of tactile feeling. Times are a changin’, as they say. Researchers at University of Pennsylvania’s Haptics Group and UC Berkeley have developed sop...
In order to compete in the 2013 World Solar Challenge, Stanford Solar Car Project manufactured Luminos: a grand step made forward to having a highly competitive race-ready solar auto! Just look at the picture. Isn’t that precisely the image you had of “cars of the future” when you were dreaming as a child? Luminos is the beautiful, yet high performance, result of two yea...
Everlift proudly presents its latest concept in renewable energy: the Looped Airfoil Wind Turbine (LAWT). To help you visualise what LAWT is about, it basically uses the “fixed-wing” theory favored on an airplane. The approach is to intake the kinetic energy of linear wind before converting it to electricity. The turbine is extensible from 10KW to Megawatts. LAWT present...
1, 2, 3 ready set…go! Forget about pedaling your way through pedestrians, Duratec and its three partners (Technodat, Evektor, supported by French Dassault System) have made a shared dream come true with their flying bike! The bike has four motors (10kW), one main propeller (diam. 1300mm) and weighs 85kg. Total weight for flying is 170kg for an average of 3 to 5 minutes i...
Container ships are getting larger, but pressure from climate change activists and governments has forced shipping companies to develop more efficient ships that save on fuel and pollute less. The Danish conglomerate Maersk is leading the way in ultra-large, ultra-efficient ships that not only pollute less but can carry more cargo. Through a combination of advanced ship ...
Read our special feature on harvesting lost energy on the factory floor in our latest quarterly e-magazine. Regenerative energy technologies long since embraced by the automotive industry are now taking their place on the factory floor. Industry is a massive consumer of energy and is in many ways very wasteful. With electric motors, much energy is lost in deceleration an...
Read our special feature on changes to electric motor efficiency standards in our latest quarterly e-magazine. For many, the recent changes to energy efficiency standards represent an unwelcome burden, but this isn’t the full story, we talk to the experts who believe these changes can be a key driver for innovation. Energy typically “represents 97 percent of total motor ...
3D printed parts created using the first 3D printer in space have arrived on Earth with a splash. The collection of test parts landed safely in the Pacific Ocean aboard SpaceX’s Dragon cargo spacecraft. NASA researchers will now compare the objects to their Earth-printed equivalents to see if the microgravity environment aboard the International Space Station (ISS) has g...
Water literally bouncing on a metal surface is an image we’re not used to seeing. Yet a team of scientists at the University of Rochester, New York achieved this very feat of engineering . Led by scientist Chunlei Guo, the team has found a way to use laser patterning techniques in order to transform metals into super-hydrophobic materials. This could come in handy in num...
Qatar Airways has received its own Airbus A380, the world’s largest passenger plane! The Qatar team decided to show the whole journey the plane took from start to finish. Beginning with the building, then the assembling of the huge parts that become this massive flying object. The fuselage, wings, tail fin and engines are put together in France and then tested with the Q...
Recycling food waste isn’t all about composting. Researchers at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genova, Italy, have been experimenting with cocoa pod husks and other waste material to create a new type of bioplastics. A frequent criticism of bioplastics is that they are made from crops, such as corn or potatoes, that could otherwise be used for food. This led the ...
Check out this innovative design concept from Jung Hyun Min. The Helivehicle Emergency Helicopter is an imaginative solution for a low-cost Emergency Helicopter. Bringing together numerous design concepts, Jung is seeking to create an all-weather STOL PAV vehicle capable of transporting patients at 3-4 times the speed of current emergency vehicles. The unique rotor...
A company based in China, Winsun new materials, has succeeded in printing 10 entire houses in just one day. Each house costs $4,800 USD and measures 200sm. They were created entirely out of recycled construction and industrial waste. The enormous printer used a mix of high-grade cement and glass fiber material.
Back in early April, we wrote about NASA’s online contest that allowed the public to choose one of three alternative designs for the new Z-2 Spacesuit. Well the results are in and the clear winner is the “Technology” option, which pulled in 233,431 votes, or roughly 63 per cent of the entire vote! NASA expect to have a fully completed suit, built and ready for test...
Alcoa’s agreement to acquire integrated titanium producer RTI International Metals in a $1.5-billion, all-stock deal will bring new material resources and new production technologies into its portfolio, and broaden its capabilities for various processes (including forging) it is engaged in already. But, another way to understand the RTI purchase is as the latest flourish...
Its goal is to give you an overview of the security functions built into network devices so you can implement the ones that are appropriate for your application. In the first blog, I briefly discussed Defense in Depth and how it is important to implement multiple types of defenses at different points in the control network. This best practice maximizes protection from c...
But the widest acceptance of the technology is in today’s data center industry, where server manufacturers are turning to liquid cooling for cost-efficient and effective thermal management. Here, in particular, quick disconnect couplings are playing an integral role in cooling system performance and reliability. Implementing an efficient, effective and safe cooling sy...
Besides high reliability and long-term supply that are required for industrial equipment devices, needs for downsizing is recently also increasing as in the case of consumer equipment. Downsizing of power circuit enables reduction of volume and installation space of main body of equipment. On the other hand, downsizing of power supply unit reduces reliability of perip...
Here European Automation, addresses this disturbing statistic while discussing the top five problems commonly faced when using HMIs (Human Machine Interfaces). Two things at once The way that humans interact with machines is changing. The static days of the monolithic monitor are beginning to make way for smaller, portable interfaces that provide the user with much...
Measuring machines are a tricky business. The smallest inaccuracy will lead to unusable results. Which is why ambient vibrations that could be transmitted to the system must be isolated at all cost. This was a task that turned out to be harder than initially expected in a Hungarian application. The originally used standard insulators were unable to solve the problem, whe...
When the diesel engine of a deck crane failed, it caused major handling problems for an offshore platform operating in the Dutch sector of the southern North Sea, problems that were solved with the use of J D Neuhaus air operated hoists. The crane was operating at 40 metres above sea level and provided a lift capacity of 20 tonnes. Replacing the broken engine, which itse...
