Engineer from Cornell University: sudoglove

Siemens and BMW believe in Wireless EV charging station

Electric cars (EV) now fall in short-term production plans of most of the car manufacturers. It is a news of these days, in fact, the market expected at the end of the year (at an estimated price of less than 7000 euros) of the Renault Twizy, a zero-emissions two-seater equipped with a 20 hp electric motor, battery life of around 100 km, and charging time of approximately 3 hours and a half. Just charging seems to be one of the troubles of these new-generation cars, ecological, yes, but forcing the user to adopt new habits with regard to refueling operations.

Some European countries (one of these is the Netherlands) have already endorsed projects to create ad hoc service stations specifically equipped to perform the rapid charging of the next coming electric cars. The evolution is however still at an early stage, so the only valid alternative, for now, is to have a garage or parking space with electrical outlet to be able to recharge batteries when the vehicle is not used and by using the appropriate electrical wiring (the equivalent of the "gun" in the traditional gas station). Actually, there is already today a technology that can fully address this problem, a technology that harnesses the wireless power transmission to charge the batteries without requiring ing any electrical connections.

The first practical applications of this technology have been achieved by HaloIPT, a company founded as a spin-out of Auckland University. HaloIPT was the first company in the world capable of marketable wireless charging systems for electric vehicles. These systems are based on the IPT (Inductive Power Transfer) technique, that exploits the physical mechanism of electromagnetic induction to transfer (or rather, to induce) a power supply at a short distance. At the recent Hannover Fair (now the largest industrial trade fair in the world), Siemens and BMW presented their own system for wireless recharging of electric vehicles, based on the same principle, namely electromagnetic induction.

If this technology will take hold, future electric cars will no longer need cumbersome and annoying cables for charging. Contactless technology also provides another significant advantage: the charging stations will be able to be installed almost anywhere (the housing is made under the soil), effectively making them almost invisible and protected from vandals and wear. The project was funded by the Ministry of the Environment of Germany, and a first test has been scheduled for next June 2011 in Berlin, with the use of different types of vehicles. The inductive charging system developed by Siemens allows charging even for short stops, making the charging process less costly in terms of duration. An example is provided by cabs, used to stand for long periods in the special lanes reserved for them: these stops could be used to carry out a battery recharging operation in a transparent way, working in "background".

The system consists of a primary coil placed completely below the ground, connecting the contactless charging station with the power supply (mains). The electric current through the coil creates nearby an electromagnetic field, which generates, by induction, a current in the secondary coil, placed at a distance of 8-15 cm from the primary coil and installed aboard the electric or hybrid car. The secondary coil, in turn, allows thus to recharge the battery. The theoretical efficiency of this system was estimated to be at least 90%, but we must wait until next May, when a 3.6-kW prototype will be thoroughly tested. The system is designed and installed so that the electromagnetic field generated interest only to a well determined area between the two coils. By law, it must meet international standards, which recommend an upper limit for the generated electromagnetic field equal to 6.25 microtesla. Siemens has ensured that the intensity of the electromagnetic field generated by their system meets this requirement, so there is no risk to health. In addition, the charging stations will be able to use the surplus energy produced by solar panels or wind systems, thus minimizing the impact on the environment.

The system designed by Siemens in cooperation with BMW will be tested and verified in practice over the coming months so that designers will be able to do the required changes and improvements to it. We should also recall that BMW strongly believes in the future of electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrid cars. With respect to this topic, they recently announced the creation of a new brand of models (identified by the letter "i") with the aim to offer the most advanced solutions for future mobility. In 2013 it is expected the launch of the models BMW i3 (a compact city car, also called as "Megacity"), and BMW i8 (a sportcar with a winning design). The BMW i3, visible in the drawing below, will be equipped with an electric motor with rated power of 100kW and aims to have minimal impact on the environment, with extensive use of carbon fiber materials to reduce weight and increase the rigidity of the vehicle.

Corning's A Day Made of Glass 2 gives us a window into the future

Before Microsoft bamboozled us with its vision of the future, Gorilla Glass maker Corning blew our socks off with its A Day Made of Glass video.

The YouTube phenomenon (17 million views and counting) gave us a glimpse of the world of tomorrow and was so attractive because it all seemed so possible, as many of the technologies on show have already been developed and are just waiting to hit our homes and streets.

And now we've had to spend another 5 or so minutes with our jaw on the floor as A Day Made of Glass 2 has been released.

According to its makers, the sequel "extends the ideas, applications, and interfaces introduced in the original video into new arenas – including healthcare and education – continuing the story of how highly engineered glass, with companion technologies, will help shape our world".

According to us, it's just bloomin' brilliant. How can you not love a bit of AR Jurassic Park action, or the fact that a doctor can literally drag a patient's brain around?

There's also an extended version of the video that gives a bit of extra detail on the technologies used in the action.

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Does the World Need a New Microcontroller Family?

Everywhere you look there are microcontrollers. 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit; high speed or low power; single or multi-core; and an enormous range of peripherals and I/O. So does the world need another family?  Infineon certainly thinks so.
Their reasoning runs like this. Over the last few years the company has been restructured to concentrate on three key areas, which it calls Energy Efficiency, Mobility and Security. In these areas it addresses specific markets, where it is either the largest player, or number two, with microcontrollers, power components and sensors.
The current microcontroller line-up is headed by the TriCore family. (This has 28% of the 32-bit automotive embedded market, and the claim is that almost every second car has a TriCore. It is also widely used in industrial applications.) Backing this are multiple families of 16-bit microcontrollers, designed around the proprietary C166 core, and 8051-compatible 8-bit controllers. There is a significant performance gap between the fastest members of the 16-bit families and the slowest of the TriCores, and this gap is what Infineon is now bridging with its latest announcement.
The intention is to provide a microcontroller that will find applications in controlling industrial drives, in renewable energy and in industrial automation. This requires high computer performance, mixed signal capacity, connectivity, both within and outside the system, and, usually, complex software. Infineon claims that the XMC4000 meets all these needs, and more.
The first surprise is that, after decades of developing its own processor architectures, the new family is based on the ARM Cortex-M4. While ARM is very widespread in microcontrollers, this is a definite change. Infineon people would not be drawn in to give too much detail about future plans, but they did say that the TriCore will continue, as it is particularly well suited for safety-critical applications. They gave the impression that they haven’t ruled out further ARM-based microcontrollers, and the implication was that these would be replacing/supplementing/whatever the 16-bit products.
The public reason for choosing ARM is the massive ecosystem that is available for ARM products. And, speculating, a secondary reason must be that paying ARM is a lot cheaper, and easier, than developing a new architecture.
Around the core is a wide selection of peripherals. Some are standards-based, such as Ethernet and USB; some are Infineon implementations of general functions, such as ADC and DAC, memory interfaces and CAN bus; and there are also “Infineon state-of-the-art” implementations, such as capacitive touch controllers, a real time clock, and memories. The road map shows a fairly typical matrix of clock speed, memory - both flash and SRAM, and packaging options. Unusually the clock speed is measured at 125ºC, rather than the lower temperatures normal for industrial parts. This is because, in applications like motor control, the microcontroller will be mounted directly on the motor, where temperatures can run very high.
A particular example that was discussed in the launch presentation was inverter control in applications like electric drives and photovoltaic connections to the grid. In both cases the inverter takes in DC and outputs AC. The XMC4000 family typically has 4 fast (3.5 million samples/sec) 12-­bit ADC modules and a ΔΣ demodulator. This allows processing to be carried out off the CPU and removes the need for an extra interface IC. A connection matrix can be set up in software to create direct connections between peripherals.
One unusual feature is the provision of up to six serial channels, whose function, (UART, SPI, I²C etc) is defined in software.
These two examples bring us neatly to the development environment. The XMC4000 is supported by the third generation of DAVE (Digital Application virtual Engineer), Infineon’s free IDE. DAVE is Eclipse-based (so it interworks with a wide range of other development tools) and comes with a free GNU compiler, a debugger, and a loader. The new version also includes a selection of apps for peripherals and applications, which are configured through a graphical user interface. When the apps are configured, DAVE generates code that can be used like a library through an API. Infineon expects that third parties and users will generate further apps.
There were simultaneous announcements from tools and middleware companies, with Atollic, IAR and Hitex all announcing support. And a slide in the presentation also named Altium, Wind River, Keil, iSystem, Lauterbach, Express Logic, Micrium and Segger as supporting the family. While most of these support the existing Infineon parts, the Cortex core makes it far easier for them to create XMC4000 specific products.
I have made a bit of a meal out of this announcement, as it can be seen as important for a number of reasons. Firstly it is another example of the way in which, despite several commentators’ views, ARM is still strengthening its hold in the microcontroller market. There are other cores around, often for niche markets, but ARM is still growing in the main stream. It also seems to me to be yet another blow for 16-bit controllers – their future is going to be even more limited as 8-bits continue to mop up low power and simple applications and 32-bit controllers offer more processing power at equivalent, or better, electrical power consumption. And finally it is an example of how the peripheral options are increasingly complex, moving from external chips to the controller core.

National Taiwan University Develops a Leg-Wheel Hybrid Mobile Robot Using LabVIEW

A team of mechanical engineers at National Taiwan University used NI LabVIEW and CompactRIO to built an energy-efficient leg-wheel hybrid mobile robot that can drive quickly and smoothly on flat terrain and can stably negotiate natural or artificial uneven terrain.

for more informations visit: http://bit.ly/evWKr0