Solar soldiers power up at ANU

Australian National University (ANU)
Aug 11, 2011

Solar technology set to revolutionise combat has been developed by The Australian National University.

Wearable light-weight solar panels have been developed by the ANU Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems as part of a $2.3 million Capability and Technology Demonstrator (CTD) contract with the Department of Defence.

Dr Igor Skryabin, Development Manager for the project, said that as part of the Australian Defence Force soldier modernisation program, infantry soldiers are being equipped with electronic devices to enhance their close combat tactical awareness and survivability.

“Currently soldiers are dependant on electrical power provided by a conventional battery to power these devices,” said Dr Skryabin. “Each battery has a different endurance and reliability level and each rechargeable type requires its own kit, compounding the bulk and weight that needs to be carried.

“While battery technology research has delivered considerable improvements, the goal of a small, lightweight power storage system, capable of sustaining all electronic equipment for the whole time a soldier is in the field, is not yet available.

“The development of these wearable solar cells will now allow soldiers to generate power in the field and reduce the need for batteries for their electronic devices. They will also establish a power supply that keeps electronic devices operational throughout the duration of missions,” he said.
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Ferrari competition highlights greener technologies

The Engineer
Aug 15, 2011

Design students have created future-friendly hypercars as Ferrari adds green technologies to its portfolio

Posing for photographs in front of the factory gates that bear the name Ferrari is a must when visiting the nearby Museo Ferrari in Maranello.
Devotion to the brand owes as much to Ferrari’s Formula One (F1) team winning 31 world titles as it does to what Ferrari chairman Luca di Montezemolo describes as the ’beauty, tradition and longevity’ of its road cars.

Ferrari thrives on excellence, and this year it challenged the world’s design students to imagine the ’hypercar of the future’. Their response was to add a shade of green to the iconic red marque.The Ferrari World Design Contest 2011 asked students from 50 design schools to create the Ferrari of 2025: a car that must be hyper light, hyper fast, hyper technological and hyper ecological.

’We wanted the students to try to understand the feelings and emotions of the third-millennium man and to anticipate social and technological changes that may have occurred by 2025,’ said Ferrari director of design Flavio Manzoni, whose department organised the competition. ’We asked the students to design, plan and maximise the performance of Ferrari vehicles at all levels; to create a pure hypercar that relies on the state of the art.’
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Power pack: nuclear power in space

The Engineer

Aug 15, 2011

With plutonium-238 supplies running low, the race is on to find new power sources for spacecraft

Most of us have a clear image of what a real-world spacecraft looks like. Whether it’s a communications satellite, an Earth observation platform or even the International Space Station, the picture that would generally spring to mind is of a relatively small, probably irregular-shaped body dwarfed by the spreading oblongs of solar panels, providing the power for whatever systems are on board.

That’s fine for Earth orbit or the inner Solar System. But what happens if you need to send a spacecraft further away, where the sun is too weak to provide enough power, or to a place where there is no constant access to sunshine, such as the dark side of the Moon or to Mars?

Probes and craft in these regions run off nuclear power. This has a long history the first nuclear power system for satellites was launched in 1961 and nuclear-powered craft include the Pioneer and Voyager probes, Galileo, Cassini, Ulysses and the New Horizons probe, currently on its way to Pluto; as well as the 1970s Viking landers, the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers, and the scientific instruments used on the Moon by the Apollo 12 to 17 crews. These are all still where they were left, apart of course from those to be used by Apollo 13, which are somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.
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New Goodyear Innovation Could Make Tire Pumps Obsolete; Government Grants to Help Quicken Development

Goodyear News Release
August 11, 2011

The days of manually adding air to under-inflated tires could be a distant memory thanks to a new innovation under development in laboratories at The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company.

Keeping tires properly inflated doesn’t just eliminate the practice of checking a tire’s air pressure and finding a tire pump and gauge that works. It also can mean real savings at the fuel pump.

Whether you drive a passenger vehicle or a commercial truck, under-inflated tires result in between a 2.5 percent and 3.3 percent decrease in fuel mileage, according to government and industry research. At today’s prices, that translates to about 12 cents per gallon at the pump.

Properly inflated tires also result in lower emissions, longer tire life, enhanced safety and improved vehicle performance.

Goodyear’s Air Maintenance Technology (AMT) will enable tires to remain inflated at the optimum pressure without the need for any external pumps or electronics. All components of the AMT system, including the miniaturized pump, will be fully contained within the tire.

“While the technology is complex, the idea behind the AMT system is relatively simple and powered by the tire itself as it rolls down the road,” said Jean-Claude Kihn, Goodyear senior vice president and chief technical officer.

“A tire that can maintain its own inflation is something drivers have wanted for many years. Goodyear has taken on this challenge and the progress we have made is very encouraging,” said Kihn. “This will become the kind of technological breakthrough that people will wonder how they ever lived without.”
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Running robot: MABEL is now the world's fastest two-legged robot with knees

University of Michigan
Aug 15, 2011

A robot in a University of Michigan lab can run like a human—a feat that represents the height of agility and efficiency for a two-legged machine. With a peak pace of 6.8 miles per hour, MABEL is believed to be the world's fastest bipedal robot with knees.

"It's stunning," said Jessy Grizzle, a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. "I have never seen a machine doing a motion like this."

MABEL was built in 2008 in collaboration with Jonathan Hurst, who was then a doctoral student at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Grizzle and U-M doctoral students Koushil Sreenath and Hae-Won Park have spent the years since ratcheting up MABEL's training. They've been progressively improving the feedback algorithms that enable the robot to keep its balance while reacting to its environment in real time.

MABEL started off walking smoothly and quickly over flat surfaces. Then it moved on to uneven ground. It took its first real jog in late July, and with that, Sreenath met the ultimate goal of his research just days before he was scheduled to defend his thesis.

Few robots can run, and the researchers say no machine but MABEL can do it with such a human-like gait. Its weight is distributed like a person's. It has a heavier torso and light, flexible legs with springs that act like tendons. MABEL is in the air for 40 percent of each stride, "like a real runner," Grizzle said. Other running robots are almost speed-walking. Their so-called flight phase when both feet are off the ground lasts for less than 10 percent of each step.

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Argonne-pioneered X-ray lens to aid nanomaterials research

Argonne National Laboratory

August 15, 2011

More affordable and efficient solar cells, batteries and lighting systems could result from a new X-ray lens that will let scientists study the nanoscale in greater detail than ever before.

A team of researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory has developed the new "multilayer Laue lens". This lens focuses high-energy X-rays so tightly they can detect objects as small as 15 nanometers in size and is in principle capable of focusing to well below 10 nanometers. This approach doubles the resolution over existing lenses, and future advancements could increase resolution by 10 times.

Understanding, imaging and manipulating the physical world at the nanoscale is critical to designing materials, devices and technologies that impact our daily lives. To aid in this effort, Argonne's Advanced Photon Source (APS) and Center for Nanoscale Materials (CNM) partnered to improve lens capabilities.
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Store CO2 Underground and Extract Electricity? A Berkeley Lab-led Team is Working on it

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
Aug 8, 2011

About a year from now, two nondescript shipping containers will be installed in a field in Cranfield, Mississippi. They’ll house turbines designed to generate electricity in a way that’s never been done before. If initial tests go well, the technology could lead to a new source of clean, domestic energy and a new way to fight climate change.

A team led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) scientists hopes to become the first in the world to produce electricity from the Earth’s heat using CO2. They also want to permanently store some of the CO2 underground, where it can’t contribute to climate change.

The group received $5 million from the Department of Energy earlier this summer to design and test the technology.

“This is the first project intended to convert geothermally heated CO2 into useful electricity,” says Barry Freifeld, a mechanical engineer in Berkeley Lab’s Earth Sciences Division who leads the effort.
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