Thanks to:PopsciNissan's ESFLOW Concept Merges Leaf's Zero-Emission Powertrain Tech With Sports Car Sexiness Nissan's ESFLOW Nissan Zero to 60 in under five seconds, sports care handling and performance, and zero emissions; that's what Nissan is promising with it's new ESFLOW sports car, a pure EV concept two-seater that captures the "joy of driving" while remaining "environmentally sympathetic." Assuming, that is, that Nissan ever gets around to rolling it off the assembly line. The ESFLOW relies on the same powertrain as Nissan Leaf, the zero emission family vehicle that many customers have been waiting on for months-and will be waiting on for months more in most cases. Nissan has only delivered a fraction of the Leaf's that have been reserved, and it likely won't be able to fill the balance of its orders until late summer. But the ESFLOW does enjoy some attractive, and decidedly sporty, features that offer some advantages over the standard internal combustion sports car. The rear-wheel drive ESFLOW stows two all-electric motors above the rear wheel axis that independently control the left and right wheels, optimizing torque. Further, the batteries are located along the axis of the front and rear wheels, placing weight in the right places to add to stability in handling (batteries also don't vary in their weight like a gas tank does, offering consistency in handling). The batteries deliver a range of about 150 miles on a charge, certainly not bad for an EV. And it looks like a rocket. Or maybe a jet fighter. It looks sexier than the Leaf, anyhow, and if Nissan's press materials are any indication, it's aimed at a different customer completely. To wit: Daniel, an ESFLOW owner, works in tech, but lives for the weekend. On Friday night after work, he gets behind the wheels of his ESFLOW which instantly links with his pocket PDA and determines the fastest route to his girlfriend's home. Finding street side parking is a synch [sic] as the ESFLOW's compact dimensions allow it to slip in to the narrowest of spaces. On Saturday he drives to a popular club to exhibit his DJ skills and his friends are impressed by his cool EV sports car. So if you're a young, single, environmentally-conscious male yuppie who also spins vinyl at swanky nightspots and has trouble parallel parking, the ESFLOW is for you. It also might suit you if you're trapped inside an arcade game, as the TRON-like video below suggests. Or you can simply love it because it's quiet, fast, and doesn't have any backseats. No word on potential pricing, but perhaps we'll hear more when the ESFLOW is officially unveiled next month at the Geneva Motor Show.
[Nissan via SmartPlanet] Add star 11:20 AM (1 hour ago) Pigging the Unpiggable: Robots Keep Gas Lines From Blowing Up PIGging Pipes Courtesy Hagen Schempf This new little piggy goes where the rest can't When a natural-gas line exploded late last summer in San Bruno, California, the ensuing firestorm raged for hours. The blaze, which took crews more than 12 hours to control, destroyed dozens of homes, injured more than 50 people, and killed eight.
Since the 1960s, maintenance workers have used "smart" pipeline inspection gauges, or PIGs, to find rust, weak seams, thinning walls and other indicators that a pipe needs repair or replacement. PIGs make a squealing sound while navigating tight passageways. They go where people can't, but controlling them can be challenging because most depend solely on the pipe's pressurized fluid for propulsion. "It's very difficult to stop a PIG in one location," says Karl Edminster, the head of Electromechanica, a Massachusetts firm that manufactures PIGs and other robotic pipe-inspection devices. "Imagine pushing a spitball through a straw." Moreover, nearly a third of the 1.3 million miles of natural-gas pipeline in the U.S. are "unpiggable." Some pipes widen and then narrow; others have bends too acute to be navigated by current PIG technology. As these pipes age and corrode, the need to inspect them is increasingly urgent. Roughly 60 percent of gas-transmission lines in the U.S. were installed before 1970, and some date back to the Great Depression. Utilities are gradually upgrading from old cast-iron and steel pipes to non-corroding plastic ones. Even so, it's still far more cost-effective to PIG a pipe than install a new one. To Carnegie Mellon University roboticist Hagen Schempf and his colleagues, the opportunity to prevent disasters by building a more sophisticated inspection device was too good to pass up. After 10 years of research, and with about $1 million in funding from NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy, Schempf's team recently debuted the Explorer-II: a 66-pound, eight-foot-long wireless robot that he describes as looking "like a series of sausage links." Its segmented body navigates twists and turns with ease. Its strong drivetrain lets operators precisely control where it starts and stops, instead of being moved by the flow of natural gas like other PIGs are. And its custom-designed sensors detect tiny anomalies in pipe walls before they turn dangerous. Conventional PIGs use permanent magnets to detect changes in the pipe walls' magnetization that may indicate corrosion, but the magnetic field interferes with the PIG's movement, slowing it down. The Explorer-II replaces permanent magnets with a compact electromagnetic coil that senses the same problems without sacrificing speed. The robot recently proved its grit in Pennsylvania, snaking through 2,000 feet of previously unpiggable pipeline, and it's now in commercial trials with a Canadian gas company. "There was a lot of gulping until we felt comfortable that we had a safe design," Schempf says. "We built this for a dangerous, explosive environment, and that was always in the back of our minds." Add star 9:41 AM (2 hours ago) The Goods: February 2011's Hottest Gadgets iRobot Scooba 230: Smaller Scrubber About half the size of earlier models, iRobot's new auto mop is able to wash in tight corners. Instead of using two bins to separate dirty water and clean water, the 'bot has two bladders that expand or shrink as needed. iRobot Scooba 230: $300; irobot.com iRobot A dozen great ideas in gear, from a dual-lens camcorder to a fizz-retaining reusable champagne cork Every month we search far and wide to bring you a dozen of the best new ideas in gear. These gadgets are the first, the best and the latest. Click here to dive in: Add star Feb 9, 2011 (18 hours ago) With 30 Meters Left to Drill, Scientists Leave Subterranean Lake Vostok For The Winter, Amid Controversy Lake Vostok Drilling Site Wikimedia Commons Russian team investigating the Antarctic lake isolated for 14 million years may have polluted it as they left Winter has stymied a Russian-led effort to drill into an Antarctic lake that has been buried for 14 million years, scientists said this week. Just 96 feet short of their goal, scientists had to put their tools away and wait out the rapidly approaching Antarctic winter. But they don't want to lose the progress they've made so far, so they're pouring kerosene down the borehole to keep it from freezing. Meanwhile, the scientific community is worried the kerosene will taint the pristine, untouched lake and harm any strange life forms that might call it home. The Russian team evacuated just in time - had they waited much longer, their airplane's hydraulic systems would have frozen, stranding them until spring, according to Science Insider. They left behind a 12,300-foot-deep borehole, just 29 meters (about 96 feet) from the lake. Teams had been working 24 hours a day in an attempt to reach the water-ice boundary. Lake Vostok is interesting for its similarity to Europa and Enceladus, frozen satellites of Jupiter and Saturn, respectively. Astrobiologists are among those eager to uncover Lake Vostok's Miocene-era secrets. Vostok Station, just above the lake, holds the distinction of experiencing the coldest recorded temperatures on Earth: -129 degrees F on July 21, 1983. If it makes you feel any better, that's the middle of winter on the continent. Incidentally, that is also much colder than the freezing point of kerosene, which is -54 degrees. Efforts to reach the lake, which remains liquid because of the pressure of a more than 12,000-foot-thick ice cap, have been controversial since it was first discovered in 1993. Russian scientists drilled into it before but had to stop several times to satisfy international bodies tasked with protecting the lake. But the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat, set up to protect the continent, approved the team's drilling methods last month, giving them the green light to keep drilling. If all goes according to plan, once the drill breaches the ice boundary, the lake's water pressure will push the drilling fluid up into the borehole, where it will freeze. Another year after that, researchers will return to extract that ancient water and analyze its contents. But some groups are not convinced the kerosene plug is safe. The Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition says contamination could destroy the very attributes that make Lake Vostok unique. "If Russia continues to drill the lubricants and anti-freeze present in their borehole may taint the microorganisms they are trying to discover," the coalition argues on its website. Now everyone will have to wait until at least next December, when the Antarctic summer allows scientists to return and switch on the drills once again. Add star Feb 9, 2011 (19 hours ago) Japanese Robots Will Run In First-Ever Full-Length Robot MarathonMarathoners may sometimes seem like robots, with their single-minded focus and obsessive dedication to finishing their goal. Now some actual robots in Japan are gearing up for a marathon of their own. The research firm Vstone is putting together the world's first robot marathon, involving 422 laps around a 100-meter track. Imagine this little robo-scurry on a 42-kilometer scale. The video shows Vstone's Robovie-PC robot autonomously following a line. Marathon competitors will either "run" autonomously like this bot, or they may be operated by humans using remote controls, according to Vstone. The event's time, date and place are still to be determined. Related Articles
TagsTechnology, Rebecca Boyle, autonomous robot, endurance race, future of robots, humanoid robots, marathoners, marathons, robots, runner, runningThe total distance is 26.2 miles, so odds are some robot feet, gears and motors may be wearing out. The Robovie will be a tough competitor, with its 20 degrees of freedom and 1.3 megapixel headcam, which helps it navigate. The robot's 1.6 GHz processor gives it the computing power of a standard PC, and it can connect to the Internet. It might not be as fun as a ballet or a robo soccer game, but endurance trials can help test robots' durability, which will probably be more important than a single trick once we welcome them into our lives. Add star Feb 9, 2011 (20 hours ago) Blood Wars: Museum Exhibit Pits Immune Systems Against Each Other in Biological Battles Blood Wars As part of the visual aspect of Blood Wars, High filled vials with pig blood and placed them over a video installation. Fancy yourself a hardy little organism? Think your immune system could trounce those of your peers? Stop by Dublin's Science Gallery and you can put your T-Cells to the test. An exhibit there is taking white blood cells from participants and pitting them against one another in a Petri dish to determine which immune system is champ. Aptly titled Blood Wars, the exhibit is part of a larger exhibition called visceral that explores the line between art and living systems. To put immune systems to the test, Blood Wars has a phlebotomist take a blood sample on-site in the museum lab, from which American artist/biologist Kathy High extracts the white blood cells, stains them different colors, and puts them in the ring with one another to vie for immuno-dominance. Set up like a tournament, Blood Wars allows winning blood cell samples move on to the next round, battling other immune systems until a champion is declared. According to High, it will also give us a better understanding of how cell membranes exchange with one another and the processes behind blood cell division. It also brings new meaning to the term "blood sport." More in the video below. [Science Gallery via Wired UK ]Add star Feb 9, 2011 (21 hours ago) HP/Palm Brings WebOS Back to Life, Announces TouchPad Tablet, Veer and Pre 3 Smartphones The New WebOS HP/Palm Palm's WebOS operating system, seen on the Palm Pre and Pixi, is the great underdog of the mobile world: critically adored, but commercially ignored, to the point that Palm actually had to sell itself to HP to stay alive. Since we've last had a big WebOS announcement, Android has exploded in popularity, Microsoft entirely rebooted their platform, and the iPhone came to Verizon--so today's announcement of the new HP (not Palm) WebOS devices is a do or die moment for WebOS. The lineup that will decide that: The Veer mini-smartphone, the Pre 3, and the TouchPad tablet. WebOS was announced back in January 2009, in a desolate post-iPhone world. Android was still in its clumsy early stages, BlackBerry was, well, the same as BlackBerry has always been, and Microsoft's Windows Mobile was dying. WebOS, and its first device, the Palm Pre, was a breath of fresh air: Maybe Apple's way isn't the only way to do a touch-based smartphone! Focused on multitasking, with a "card" based metaphor that would later be swiped by both BlackBerry and Nokia, as well as innovative features like a universal search, WebOS had a level of polish that matched the iPhone, and abilities that outstripped it. But the Pre was hobbled with flimsy (though adorable) hardware, a small launch partner in Sprint, and a huge gap between its announcement and its actual release--by which time the iPhone 3GS had stolen all its thunder. Worst of all, Palm was slow to open up the app store to developers, so even though eventually WebOS would be a very developer-friendly environment, at launch it had 30 apps, and was maddeningly slow to expand. Despite all its strengths, the Pre was a sales failure, and eventually Palm had to allow itself to be sold. In April 2010, HP purchased Palm, though what the company was really after was WebOS. But aside from the Pre 2 (which is basically a Pre with a faster processor), another ten months would go by before we saw a really update on WebOS. Today's announcement shows Palm's next line of WebOS devices--well, HP's, we should say, since the name "Palm" is nowhere to be found on any of these devices. The HP Veer, pictured above, is probably the most curious of the three. It's in the original Pre shape--a pebble-inspired design with a vertical slide-out keyboard--but it's even smaller than the already-diminutive Pre. At only 2.6 inches, the Veer is (when closed) the size of a credit card, which is in direct contrast to the current trend of larger and larger smartphones. Despite its size, it's actually a very powerful device: It uses the same Snapdragon processor as the much bigger T-Mobile G2, and offers HSPA+, which AT&T and T-Mobile are calling 4G. (It's not, technically, and is slower than Verizon's LTE 4G, but it is significantly faster than 3G, so we're not complaining too much. Check out our 4G explainer if you're still confused.) It'll have a relatively small 8GB of storage, but 512MB of memory--the same as the iPhone 4. It'll be available in "early spring," which could be very soon. If miniaturization isn't your thing, the flagship Pre 3 might be a better option. While the Veer is kind of a smushed Pre, the Pre 3 is stretched, pulled like saltwater taffy out to a generous 3.6 inches (with a 480 x 800 resolution, about the industry average these days). It's still a vertical slider, but it's got some guts that'd make the original Pre feel pretty outclassed. It'll have the next-gen Snapdragon processor, clocked at 1.4GHz, with 512MB of memory and either 8GB or 16GB of storage. On the camera side, it'll have a 5MP rear-facing camera for normal photos, and a front-facing camera (likely a 1.3MP sensor) for video chatting. It too will boast HSPA+ connectivity, so it looks like these two are destined for either AT&T or T-Mobile, at least at first (and we'd wager on the former). The Pre 3 will be available this summer, which is an awfully long way off. Hopefully it'll still be impressive and in our minds then. What we were most anticipating from this conference is a WebOS tablet. WebOS is particularly suited to a tablet, with its full previews of apps, elegant multitasking, and non-intrusive notifications system, which is probably why BlackBerry was so heavily, um, inspired by WebOS with its new PlayBook tablet. But there's no beating the real thing, and HP's TouchPad tablet looks mighty impressive. It's a 9.7-incher, with very near exactly the same dimensions and weight as the iPad, but (as could be expected, given the iPad's age) it's much more powerful inside. The TouchPad boasts a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, 16GB or 32GB of storage, 1GB of memory (four times that of the iPad, and probably essential for this kind of multitasking), and all the usual accelerometer/compass/gyro sensors, along with both a front- and rear-facing camera for video chatting. The TouchPad, along with the Veer and Pre 3, has full Flash support and, oddly enough, Beats by Dr. Dre audio technology (!). Basically, all of these devices should sound fantastic, which as any Android user knows is not necessarily a given on a smartphone. They'll all also use the Touchstone charger, which was a cool little feature that has long set WebOS apart. The Pre 3, Veer, and TouchPad all support inductive charging, which is a wireless protocol using magnets that enables you to charge a device simply by plopping it onto a specific surface (in this case, a stone-shaped magnetic charger). What's really interesting about the TouchPad is how it interacts with the WebOS smartphones. They speak to each other in ways no other platform does--not Android, and not iOS. When a smartphone and the TouchPad are on the same Wi-Fi network, you can get text messages and phone calls on the TouchPad. Our favorite feature might be "Touch to Share." It's kind of similar to Google's "Chrome to Phone" feature, but even more intuitive. If you're, say, looking at directions on your TouchPad, and you're heading out the door, you can simply tap the TouchPad with a Pre 3 or Veer phone, and it'll send those directions right to your phone. Really cool stuff! One of the best new features of the updated WebOS is the universal search, which has been renamed to Just Type--reasonably so, since it's not just search anymore. Essentially, you can start typing anywhere, and you'll get a list of options for what to do with what you're typing. Search on Google? Wikipedia? IMDb? Or maybe you wanted that to be a text message, an email, or a Twitter or Facebook update? It's all right there--no reason to open up an app first. HP is making sure to emphasize app development this time around, showing off new apps from Facebook, Amazon (the WebOS Kindle app looks pretty great), Skype, various content providers (Dreamworks and some sort of magazine platform were shown specifically), and even the smaller developers who are so essential to a platform's survival--including everyone's favorite, Angry Birds. We're still lacking some of the key specifics: Price, release date, and carrier. Given their HSPA+ compatibility, we know the Veer and Pre 3 are headed for either AT&T or T-Mobile here in the States, and it's a fair assumption that the Veer will come in cheaper than the Pre 3. The TouchPad is due for release this summer, but price is very pressing for a tablet these days--the iPad set the bar very, very low, and any tablet that costs more than $500 at base (we're looking at you, Motorola Xoom) is going to be fighting an uphill battle. The devices look pretty great--WebOS looks better than ever, early impressions of the hardware are very positive, and the new slogan ("HP WebOS: Now Available in S, M, L") is cute. But there's still an issue with release cycles: HP/Palm has got to stop announcing things this way. We're excited now, but we won't see the Veer, Pre 3, or TouchPad for months, by which time there'll be a new iPad and more likely than not a new iPhone. Also, the impressive internals--dual core processors, lots of memory, new Snapdragons--will be merely the norm by this summer, rather than the hottest new thing. That'll all serve to dampen excitement somewhat, which isn't exactly what HP wants right now. Still, if HP can get its app situation under control, these will be some very competitive devices come summer. You can check out more about the new WebOS devices at, curiously, Palm.com, where apparently they haven't given up entirely on the venerable Palm name. Add star |
Thursday, February 10, 2011
A green Supercar???
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment