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Category: transportation – Page 558

A startup called Proterra has been working on electric buses for years, and its latest model has a pretty impressive range. Its Catalyst E2 Series buses can drive up to 350 miles on a single charge, which means it can go a quite a bit further than Tesla’s top-tier Model S that already boasts a 300-plus-mile range. The vehicle can also outlast its predecessor that can only go for 258 miles. As Wired notes, electric buses might even be better than cars, since they don’t need a huge network of charging stations. They drive a set route, so cities can simply install some where they’re bound to pass — the E2 might not even need to recharge until the end of the day. Further, not everyone can afford an electric vehicle, but most people can afford to ride a bus.

The Catalyst E2 Series buses are powered by two gargantuan batteries the size of mattresses that can store up to 660 kWh. Its lightweight frame, along with its regenerative braking system, also helps it achieve that impressive range. The only thing that might hold cities and companies back from purchasing E2 is that one will set them back $799,000, over twice the amount of a typical diesel bus. Proterra is probably hoping that government subsidies, coupled with the fuel and maintenance savings they’ll get, can convince them to buy the vehicle. If you’re in Los Angeles, you might be able to ride one of the first E2 buses scheduled to hit the road in 2017.

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Definitely a big deal.

I look forward to the day when everything lives and adapts as well as interacts in their environments. Buildings, machines, autos, planes, etc. Last month we read about the living buildings that DARPA is focused on that utilizes synthetic cells which enables buildings and other structures to self repair themselves much like human cells do.

Definitely glad to see more and more people jump on the Singularity path.

Materials with large dielectric constants—aka “high-K materials”—have recently garnered attention for their potential use within future generations of reduced-dimension semiconductor devices.

Barium strontium titanate, one such material, possesses an inherently large dielectric constant that can be altered significantly by an applied electrical field—by as much as a factor of 10. While this property has been known to exist for more than half a century and many researchers have attempted to exploit it, the technology has been limited by the low quality of the material. By semiconductor industry standards, the material is considered to be defective.

But researchers at University of California, Santa Barbara, who began exploring thin-film tunable dielectrics using sputtered material nearly two decades ago, are now trying to leverage advanced and scalable deposition techniques like (MBE) to create tunable, high-frequency integrated circuits and devices with high-quality materials that are comparable to modern semiconductor technology.

Continue reading “Tuning materials and devices to adapt to their environment” | >

Not a complete list — where are al the various joint ventures & start ups that are also in play; however, what about all those Laboratories (Governmental, Universities, and joint venture related labs) such as Los Alamos or ORNL or MIT or USC, and what about all of the governmental agencies (NASA, DoD, etc.), and how about all of those special programs like DARPA. And, this is only the US not to mention what has been happening in China, Australia, Canada, UK, Spain, Germany, Russia, Singapore, etc.

Nice article to use as a starting list only; itmissed many, many other companies, labs, universities, and governments who are really leading most of the progress forward in QC. Some start up to add — Qubitekk, QC Ware, Rigetti Computing to just name 3 off the top of my head. Article is missing a lot in its list.

Google, Microsoft, and Airbus are investing in quantum computing. In all, we identified 18 corporates developing the tech, or partnering with startups like D-Wave to do so, and what they hope to achieve.

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Self-stabilising wheelchair from Israeli technology start-up lets you cruise through town while standing. Matthew Stock reports.

Nearly 20 years ago Amit Goffer suffered an accident that confined him to a wheelchair. Increasingly dissatisfied with what was on offer, the electrical engineer built this — the UPnRIDE. It’s a robotic exoskeleton that helps people paralysed from the waist down to stand tall in the outside world. (SOUNDBITE) (English) CHIEF TECHNICAL OFFICER AND FOUNDER OF UPNRIDE, DOCTOR AMIT GOFFER SAYING: “The UPnRIDE device, the whole idea is that you can use it outdoors as well as indoors and in a safe manner because they, it automatically balances you and stablizes you… The concept is new because you don’t see any disabled person rolling outside in a standing position so this is a breakthrough in the industry of wheelchair manufacturing, I’m sure that others will follow.” It goes from seated to standing at the push of a button. A gyroscope — similar to that in a two-wheeled Segway — along with self-stabilising software helps manoeuvre upright over uneven urban terrain.

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Want to know what it looks like to travel at the speed of sound…in a windowless pod? Well, here you go.

What would it be like to ride on the Hyperloop—the 700 mph (1,100 km/h) propulsion-driven transportation of the future?

In the video below from Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, you can see how it would look to ride in a windowless pod that is zooming through an airless tube and carrying passengers at the speed of sound (or really close to it).

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All aboard the Sky Train.

China’s first sky trains came off the assembly line in the city of Nanjing on Saturday, with China becoming the third country to master sky train technology, after Germany and Japan.

The Nanjing Puzhen Company Limited, affiliated to China’s largest State-owned rolling stock manufacturer CRRC Corporation Limited (China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation), took only four months to design and complete the elevated railway trains, said CRRC.

The two compartments can hold more than 200 passengers, and when compared with subways and trams, sky trains have lower costs, better climbing and turning ability, and higher wind resistance.

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Wish I could attend.

The Aviation Industry Corp. of China (AVIC) will promote its new generation aircraft at China’s upcoming aerospace trade show, the aircraft manufacturer said Thursday.

The company’s heavy transport aircraft Y-20 and stealth fighter J-31, the major models in the new series, will be demonstrated at the 11th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition, which opens on Nov. 1 in the southern port city of Zhuhai, Guangdong Province.

The new planes represent AVIC’s advances toward the fourth generation of aircraft technology, the company said.

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