Friday, December 25, 2009

Atlas Copco offers a green compressor technology

With global warming on the rise its really important for industries and companies to stay upto date with the with the latest green technology. Some countries have stringent carbon emission rules to curb carbon emission and also levy heavy tax duties. So Energy saving is very important. 

Atlas Copco is a Swedish Company recognized world wide for its quality industrial products and solutions since 1873. Atlas Copco has come up with a with a great and ingenious compressor technology called the "Net zero energy consumption compressor". By the name it sounds like, Is it a perpetual motion machine?? 
No it isn't! 
The concept behind this technology is heat energy recovery.Compression of air at high pressures produces a large amount of heat which is lost in the atmosphere and the precious energy in the form of heat is lost.

Monday, December 21, 2009

Lotus Omnivore Engine: 10% better fuel efficiency

Internal Combustion engines have been driving the world around for the last 100+ years. They are widely used because of their of their rugged construction and reliability to work in any condition, they still rule the world but, they are polluting and hence don’t seem to have a great future cause of the threat of global warming facing our planet. As a result a lot of companies are trying to refine the engine and develop new technologies.   Lotus Engineering has come up with a type of engine called the “Omnivore engine”. Lotus reviled the engine concept at the Geneva Motor show earlier this year. Now they seem to be running test trials and test show that the Engine achieves 10% better fuel economy compared to direct injection engines, with ultra low emissions. The engine takes advantage of electronic engine management technology; it can run on any liquid fuel hence the name Omnivore. 

The most interesting thing about this engine is that it has variable compression ratio(10:1to 40:1), it is achieved by a puck at the top of the cylinder which moves up and down thus affecting the volume/compression ratio of the engine. The Engine operates on a two stroke cycle and has homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI), As a result the engine does not require a spark plug just like a Diesel engine. Unlike 4 stroke where downsizing the engine increases its fuel efficiency here up sizing the engine improves fuel efficiency i.e. bigger the engine the better efficiency it has.
The prototype engine is a 500cc single cylinder mono-block engine. For practical application Lotus plans on developing a multi cylinder engines and is in talks with other companies. It is quite promising and as a result of it simple construction it will be cheaper to manufacture and thus we’ll have cheaper and more efficient greener cars in the future.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Neato Robotic Vacuum Cleaner: Best gift for your Mom

Tired of vacuum cleaning your floor? Here is something for you.
Neato Robotics is a California based company which aims to produce products to help people get free from household chores. On December 16 2009, they introduced a new Robotic Vacuum cleaner.

"The Neato XV-11"
This is not something very new in the market we had iRobot’s Roomba which came in 2002 which sold over 3 million units.
The technology which gives Neato an edge over its competitors is called the Room Positioning System (RPS) it uses laser vision mapping which maps the entire floor and avoids obstacles perfectly. It traces everything(360degree) within a 4mt range. It systematically moves over the entire floor by back and forth motion rather than moving at random, like its competitors do.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

New Google products

Google has come up with a couple of new products 
  1. Google goggles for Android
  2. Google translate with voice
Google goggles

Google goggles is an great application which is exclusively available for the Google Android Platform. Its a visual system which lets you take a picture of something and that picture is compared with similar pictures available in the Google database to give you search results and details about it.
For E.G. You can take a snap of a book cover and get search results for it.
Its still has a lot of glitches and is under development.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

"Sixth Sense" By Pranav Mistry

Technology as we know, has come a long way now. We have laptop computers which now even fit in our pockets. Smart phones which can do almost everything for you which you could never think of. We have 4G technology which can provide you seamless ultra high speed wireless internet connectivity anywhere on the go. We have powerful and energy efficient processors which are smaller than your thumb nail. But surprisingly a lot has not been done to connect our virtual/Digital world with the real world, Like we still have the same old mouse and keyboard for interacting with our computer and now we have touch which is becoming more prevalent. But still our computers/devices still don't recognize the real word, your computer does not recognize the fact that a thumbs up means good and thumbs down means bad.
But now, An Indian guy by the name Pranav Mistry, Research Assistant and PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab has come up with an ingenious solution to the problem. 
The name:"Sixth Sense"  




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