Category Archives: Products

Wind-Powered Water Heater

University Students Build Wind-Powered Water Heater by Gregg Kleiner:

A team of engineering students from Oregon State University, inspired by a late professor’s rudimentary sketches, has designed a working prototype of a hot water heating system powered solely by the wind.

The students believe the technology, which uses magnets, a copper plate and plenty of ingenuity, has the potential to birth a new company and ultimately make an impact on the way the world heats water, especially in developing countries.
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The prototype was the team’s senior design project, a year-long, hands-on engineering course at OSU that all senior engineering students must participate in, choosing an idea or basic design and developing it to the prototype stage. Despite having no funding, the students say the concept has now been proven to work, and several team members considered spinning off a nonprofit company that would bring the technology to developing countries.

Wakamaru Robot

Another human like robot from Japan (by Mitsubishi): Wakamaru

Unlike conventional robots operated by human instructions, “wakamaru” acts spontaneously, based on his own and his owner’s daily life schedules that he stores. His autonomous behavior is composed of time, place, and behavior, three elements. He uses to approach people and move around according to the time of day, thereby blending in with its owners’ lifestyles.

Read more about the technology behind the robot.

Write on Water

Photo of writing on water

Device uses waves to “print” on water surface

Ok I don’t exactly understand the practical advantages of this but it is cool.

Researchers at Akishima Laboratories (Mitsui Zosen), working in conjunction with professor Shigeru Naito of Osaka University, have developed a device that uses waves to draw text and pictures on the surface of water.
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Each letter or picture remains on the water surface only for a moment, but they can be produced in succession on the surface every 3 seconds.

Source, in Japanese

A plane You Can Print

A plane you can print by Paul Marks:

In rapid prototyping, a three-dimensional design for a part – a wing strut, say – is fed from a computer-aided design (CAD) system to a microwave-oven-sized chamber dubbed a 3D printer. Inside the chamber, a computer steers two finely focused, powerful laser beams at a polymer or metal powder, sintering it and fusing it layer by layer to form complex, solid 3D shapes.

Polecat is a new unmanned plane: “About 90 per cent of Polecat is made of composite materials with much of that material made by rapid prototyping.”

More information on 3d printing from a manufacturer of the printers. Not quite ready for in home printing of say a new can opener on demand but can that day really be far away?

Safe Water Through Play

photo of merry go round for safe water

Play Pumps

It’s a simple idea. As children spin on a merry-go-round, water pumps from below the ground. It is stored in a tank just a few feet away, making a safe, plentiful supply of water available in the community.

Nearly 700 PlayPumps have been installed in South Africa, providing safe water to a million people living in rural communities. Thousands more PlayPumps will be installed throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, bringing the many benefits of ready access to clean drinking water to millions of underserved people.

Wind Power Technology Breakthrough

China Makes Huge Breakthrough in Wind Power Technology by Zijun Li:

Chinese developers unveiled the world’s first full-permanent magnetic levitation (Maglev) wind power generator at the Wind Power Asia Exhibition 2006 held June 28 in Beijing, according to Xinhua News.
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The Maglev generator is expected to boost wind energy generating capacity by as much as 20 percent over traditional wind turbines. This would effectively cut the operational expenses of wind farms by up to half, keeping the overall cost of wind power under 0.4 yuan (5 cents US), according to Guokun Li, the chief scientific developer of the new technology. Further, the Maglev is able to utilize winds with starting speeds as low as 1.5 meters per second (m/s), and cut-in speeds of 3 m/s, the chief of Zhongke Energy was quoted as saying at the exhibition. When compared with the operational hours of existing wind turbines, the new technology will add an additional 1,000 hours of operation annually to wind power plants in areas with an average wind speed of 3 m/s.

Toyota Robots

photo of Toyota partner robot

Toyota Announces Overview of “Toyota Partner Robot”

Toyota wants its partner robots to have human characteristics, such as being agile, warm and kind and also intelligent enough to skillfully operate a variety of devices in the areas of personal assistance, care for the elderly, manufacturing, and mobility. Furthermore, since each area requires a special set of skills, Toyota is promoting the development of three different types of partner robots (walking, rolling, and mountable), each with its own areas of expertise.

Read posts about the Toyota Productions System (TPS) on the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog.

Others are making progress on human like robots including Sony and Honda. See Sony QRIO Robots in action in this flash video below:

And read more about Honda Robots: ASIMO and P3.

Tour the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Lab

Robert Scoble videotaped his visit to the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Lab and posted the video to Microsoft’s channel 9 – which has quite a few interesting videos.

They have some of the coolest people I’ve ever met and the robotics might surprise you (two of the students were building soccer-playing robots on top of Segways, other students were building surgery tools, really great stuff).

More robotics webcasts from Channel 9.

Robot Football (Soccer)

In addition to the World Cup another international football event is taking place in Germany this month: RoboCup 2006

Researcher Founds a Robot Soccer Dynasty (including video webcast):

RoboCup is an international project to foster advances in artificial intelligence and intelligent robotics research. The ultimate goal of RoboCup is to develop, by 2050, a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can beat the human world champion soccer team. Veloso and Carnegie Mellon have been participating since “pre-RoboCup” events in 1996 and the first official RoboCup games in 1997. Veloso was general chair of RoboCup 2001 in Seattle.

Gecko Tape

Sticking Around with Gecko Tape:

The tape is a simple version of the adhesive on a gecko’s feet. The soles of the lizard’s feet are covered with millions of tiny little hairs, too small to see with the naked eye. The molecules in these hairs snuggle up to the molecules of any surface the gecko walks on. The molecules are attracted to each other, forming a temporary bond that keeps the gecko firmly in place.

Also see, Caught on tape: Gecko-inspired adhesive is superstrong, for more details.

Photo: An array of tiny plastic pegs mimics the microscopic structure of a gecko’s sticky sole.