Lifeboat Foundation

https://youtube.com/watch?v=_Me1P0JljVk

Behold, the future of personal mobility devices: The Honda Uni-Cub. The Uni-Cub, which is self-balancing, has zero turning radius, and is battery powered, is essentially a sit-on Segway without any handlebars. Most importantly, the Uni-Cub is much smaller and easier to maneuver than the Segway, allowing for Uni-Cub users to ride alongside or even within a pack of pedestrians (and yes, when you sit on the Uni-Cub, you don’t tower above everyone else: your head is at the same height as someone standing up). The main usage scenario for the Uni-Cub is moving around internal spaces, such as offices and museums: Not only is it easier and faster than walking, but compared to other personal mobility devices it also leaves your hands free to operate a smartphone or some other implement of your choosing.

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Researchers in the US have identified the two main culprits in rechargeable battery degradation, which could lead to longer-lasting phone, laptop and electric car batteries.

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BMW and Mercedes-Benz are teaming up on wireless car charging, pushing a super-efficient way of refueling EVs like the BMW i8 and the Mercedes S500 Plug-In Hybrid simply by parking over a certain spot on your driveway. The system, which the two German marques hope to get accepted as the de-facto standard for wireless car recharging, promises a cut in charge times without the hassle of having to regularly plug in: BMW says the batteries in its i8 supercar, for instance, can be topped up in under two hours.

As with other such systems we’ve seen, Mercedes-Benz and BMW use a pair of coils to transmit power wirelessly. A primary coil is mounted in a floor plate, and connects with a secondary coil in the vehicle floor: an alternating magnetic field is created by the former and tracked by the latter.

However, the new system uses a circular coil which the two companies claim makes for a more productive magnetic field, with more than 90-percent efficiency. The charging rate is initially 3.6 kW, but could be ramped up to as much as 7 kW, in preparation for the next generation of higher-powered EV drivetrains car firms envisage.

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https://youtube.com/watch?v=WnrXBdznOe8

Hyperloop, dubbed “the fifth mode of transport,” is real. At least, that’s what the introductory video released this week on YouTube is trying to communicate.

Hyperloop is a project envisioned by engineer and inventor Elon Musk. In short, the goal is to build a high-speed transportation system using a low-pressure tube train, with a top speed of 800 miles per hour (1,300 km/h). Hyperloop Technologies and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies are both research companies looking to turn Musk’s vision into reality. The former company has undergone a seed round led by SherpaVentures, while the latter is crowdsourced.

Continue reading “Hyperloop’s intro video claims the future is now” »

The Powerwall, a rechargeable lithium ion home battery from the makers of the Tesla Model S car, will be on sale in Australia by the end of the year.

Powerwall will be available in Australia in late 2015 through a variety of Tesla Energy partners who are yet to be announced, Business Insider reported.

See also: All hail Apple’s new iOS 9 font, San Francisco.

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It’s Elon Musk’s idea, but Hyperloop Transportation Technologies is trying to make this “pipe dream” a reality.

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https://youtube.com/watch?v=erjo8yfyD9w

The self-driving vehicle revolution has gotten underway in the UK, with the first of a number of automated ‘pod’ trial vehicles unveiled to the public in Milton Keynes this week.

The LUTZ (Low-carbon Urban Transport Zone) Pathfinder is a diminutive electric-powered two-seater that’s about half the length of an ordinary car. If you feel the need for speed, however, you may want to look elsewhere for now. The Pathfinder is designed for use in pedestrianised areas, with a top speed of just 24 km/hr.

Continue reading “The UK’s first self-driving ‘pod’ vehicle hits the streets” »

CEO of parent company, Damiler, says Mercedes premium driverless cars are a ‘concrete development goal’.

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Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are a cornerstone of consumer tech. They make thin-and-light TVs and smartphones possible, provide efficient household, handheld, and automobile illumination, and, of course, without LEDs your router would not have blinkenlights. Thanks to some engineers from MIT, though, a new diode looks set to steal the humble LED’s thunder. Dubbed a diode for light, and crafted using standard silicon chip fabrication techniques, this is a key discovery that will pave the path to photonic (as opposed to electronic) pathways on computer chips and circuit boards.

In electronics, a diode is a gate that only allows electrons to pass in one direction (and with an LED, it also emits light at the same time). In this case, the diode for light — which is made from a thin layer of garnet — is transparent in one direction, but opaque in the other. Garnet is usually hard to deposit on a silicon wafer, but the MIT researchers found a way to do it — and that’s really the meat of this discovery.

Basically, it’s now possible, with regular chip-fab tools, to create an integrated silicon circuit with optical, rather than electronic, interconnects — both internally, and between other chips. Photons, moving through the kind of transparent metamaterials that would be required to make such a circuit, move a lot faster than electrons. Furthermore, optical channels, through wavelength-division multiplexing, can carry a lot more data than electric signals. At the moment, hundreds of copper wires connect the CPU, northbridge, and memory — with on-chip photonic controllers, a motherboard might only have 10 or 20 channels.

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