Lewis Hamilton burns some rubber on the streets of Mumbai.

Formula 1 McLaren driver Lewis Hamilton was in Mumbai this past Sunday night at Bandra-Kurla Complex. The run up was flagged off by Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan in the presence of Public Works Department and Tourism Minister Chhagan Bhujbal, among other dignitaries.

With the Singapore Grand Prix just a week ahead, Lewis Hamilton made this skilful burnout in the  Vodafone McLaren Mercedes MP4-27 race car. Lewis Hamilton told that he is really looking forward for the Indian Grand Prix scheduled on 26-28 October later this year.

My cousin brother Rahil was able to capture the run up and burnout up close. Probably the best amateur footage available on YouTube.

DARPA's Cheetah Robot and the LS3 taking quadruped robot tech to new highs

DARPA in collaboration with Boston Dynamics has been brewing up some really awesome legged robot technology over the past few years. The various legged robot projects have been under constant update and improvement over the years. The list of the state of the art legged robots from Boston Dynamics includes the The Big Dog, Cheetah, Petman and the latest of the pack, the LS3. Each robots have been designed for a own unique purpose and have significant differences.

The latest updates however are from the Cheetah and the LS3.

The Cheetah

The Cheetah has been under development since 1989 under MIT and later under Boston Dynamics. It has been developed and funded under DARPA's Maximum Mobility and Manipulation (M3) program. A recent video update on YouTube shows The Cheetah running at 28.3 mph (45.5 km/h), breaking it previous record of 27.78 mph (44.7 km/h) which it achieved back in 2009. This makes it 0.5 mph faster than Usain Bolt.

Now that being said, The Cheetah has a lot of advantages over Usain Bolt, It runs on a high speed treadmill; plus, it is powered by an off board hydraulic pump and uses a boom-like device to keep it running in the center of the treadmill. Overall, significant improvements for the speeds have been made in the algorithms and a more powerful pump have been added. Although Boston Dynamics plans to test a free running Cheetah in the open environment by next year.

Not much details about the technology have been made public.

A Solar- powered system that's a Reverse air-conditioner to develop power for Developing world.

In the developing world, electricity and other resources necessary to run clinics are difficult to achieve and many a times costly to produce. In many African countries electricity from the grid is very inconsistent and unavailable in rural parts. So medical centres and clinics in these areas rely on Diesel generators or Photovoltaic solar cells for power, now these are costly propositions and require recurring cost of fuel and maintenance. Also places in Africa that fall in the temperate regions face very cold winters and Hot water becomes a necessity. Health worker avoid washing hands as the water supply gets very cold thus creating unhygienic conditions. 

A startup by the name STG (Solar Turbine Group) international established by alumni students of MIT have come up with a seemingly effective solution to the problem. The Technology is called Solar ORC and is somewhat similar to one those Concentrated solar power systems. It utilizes parabolic mirror reflectors that look like troughs. At the centre line of the these troughs lies a metal pipe which carries a HTF (Heat transfer fluid) inside. Now this HTF absorbs the heat from the concentrated sunlight and this results in raising the temperature of the HTF upto 160 degree Celsius. 

Credit: stginternational.org (Click to enlarge)

This heated HTF now enters into an ORC unit/ORC engine, it works on an Organic Rankine cycle (Its a Rankine cycle except it works on Refrigerant rather than water as working fluid) . It works like a reversed air conditioning unit. Instead of utilizing electricity to cool the air and throw hot air outside. It actually uses the hot HTF and the cold ambient air to produces mechanical work which is converted into electricity.

The key element of the system a device called a scroll expander, which convert the heat difference into mechanical power is described in a paper to be published in the ASME Journal of Engineering for Gas Turbines and Power.

3D printing and robotic technology helping doctors help patients

3D printing technology has really given manufacturing a new dimension. Specially if you think in terms of  manufacturing small intricate parts that might be useful in small robotic devices. Although personally I never thought that one day 3D printing technology would help doctors help patients until, I came across this story.

2 year old Emma suffers from a rare congenital disorder called Arthrogryposis that is characterized by multiple joint contractures (shortening and hardening of muscles) and can include muscle weakness and fibrosis. Emma was born with her legs folded up by her ears and her shoulders turned in. As a result she could not move her arms and lift things like normal 2 year olds would.

So the solution was to give her arms some external help by an exoskeleton. Researchers at a Delaware hospital 3D printed a durable custom device with the tiny, lightweight custom parts Emma needed. She calls them her “magic arms.” Now this allows her to freely move her hands around and pick up objects.

Lockheed in Collaboration with LaserMotive Tests UAVs With Laser Power Beaming

The quest to transmit power without wires has been something people have been working on since centuries and obviously it not science fiction anymore, people have come up with different ways to transmit power wirelessly. We wrote about Wirticity back in 2010 which gained a lot of media attention back then.

Back in 2009 a Seattle-based company by the name 'LaserMotive' specializing in laser power beaming proved to be the only successful entrant and winner of the NASA-sponsored Power Beaming Challenge. 

The idea of laser power is pretty simple. Just like a photovoltaic cell (solar cell) produces electricity from sun light, Laser power beaming acts in the same way. A powerful laser beam is used to carry energy over distances; this energy in the form of light and heat can be converted into electricity by using photovoltaic cells. This enables to transfer power wirelessly over distances and can be consider a more practical efficient and cost effective way compared to other wireless power transmission methods available. To get into the details you can check out this Laser power beaming fact sheet.

So now that we know about laser power beaming, the idea can be used for a wide variety of applications, only your imagination is the limit. Although there are a lot of safety and efficiency factors involved with makes it difficult to use over existing electric power grid, we wont get into that in this post. You can always leave a question or opinion in the comments.

Now in the modern warfare era of Drones, UAVs and UAS (unmanned ariel systems), endurance is one of the major challenges faced by UAV designers and developers. Battery based UAVs are silent but poor at endurance. Conventional fuel based UAVs have better endurance but they are very noisy and are difficult to use where you require to fly at low altitudes and small areas. So the application of laser power beaming seems to be the best solution. 

Miniand Tech its MiniX TV Box and Mini PC devices.

In the past we have covered some really interesting and cost effective mini computers and plug computer devices. Here is a list if you are interested. 

An Australia/China based company by the name "Miniand Tech" is selling two interesting mini computer devices. One is the MK802 Mini PC and the other is the MiniX TV Box H24 which can be rather compared to a TV box like Google TV.

The MK802 Mini PC.

The MK802 Mini PC is a kind of plug computer with very small dimensions i.e. 88.5 x 35 x 13.4 mm weighs in at 300 grams. The device has 2 USB ports one Full size standard USB and the other seems to be a micro USB. The best part is the standard USB could be used to connect plug and play devices like a wireless mouse and keyboard. It runs on the latest Android 4.0 OS ans supports most application and features supported by a top notch Android 4.0 smartphone. Its powered by an External adapter 5V/2A output, 110-240V input.

What that means you could even run it from an external battery if you get the right voltage and amps. Although i wont recommend you to do that if you don't know anything about electronics.