The proposal to pave the way for self-driving cars over the next decade was unveiled by the U.S. Department of Transportation in the wake of President Obama’s final State of the Union address. One proposed milestone includes developing testing and performance standards for fully autonomous vehicles within the next six months. Another half-year goal is to develop a “model...
That short trial run along a lake in the Dutch town of Wageningen marked the first time such a self-driving vehicle had appeared on public roads in the Netherlands. The WePod autonomous vehicle is an electric, driverless shuttle bus that could hit top speeds of 40 kilometers per hour when fully operational. But it maintained a speed of just 8 km/h during the first sho...
The tests are a milestone in the company's efforts to develop self-driving vehicles, which include plans to develop an autonomous bus in the next three years and mass-produce them within five years, according to a Reuters report. Baidu joins Google and Apple, among other technology companies, in the race to develop sensing, positioning, infotainment and other software...
As more renewable resources keep getting added to power grids, peak demand patterns have been shifting -- and many utilities are racing to adapt their operations. Electric vehicles offer ample opportunities to help utilities enhance reliability, implement demand response, and even develop new revenue streams. The 2014 industry review by the American Council on Renewab...
The idea of drones transporting medication to remote villages or supplying food to regions cut off by environmental catastrophes is quite impressive. Now US-based Matternet plans to make what seemed like pure science fiction just a few years ago into a reality. The Industry Journal reports on exactly how they will do this. Online retailer Amazon recently made headline...
Aircraft electric power characteristics are critical in present-day designs. Design engineers of system blocks, ranging from central processing units to control surface actuators/motors, are increasingly concerned with voltage holdup and quality during transition times between external power aircraft electric system, emergency back-up power, or transient-induced voltage ...
The future belongs to electric motors, and commercial vehicles are no exception. To date, however, many attempts to develop electric motors for commercial vehicles have stalled at the prototype stage or are extremely expensive: Usually electric models cost between two and three times as much as their conventional equivalents. The reason for this is the lack of suitable t...
The comments section of many articles centered on this topic are filled with phrases such as ‘precursor to robot tanks,’ ‘a danger to our roadways,’ and other phrases slamming artificial intelligence. Despite some extremist language, many of these concerns are warranted. Any flaw in the programming of autonomous vehicles could be fatal, so it is understandable why the...
The cruiser, made from turned and milled components, brought home three titles. The custom parts were machined in-house on modern five-axis machining centers with TNC controls from Heidenhein. Using Heidenhain controls, Thunderbike created a unique motorbike with an extremely low seat position and sweeping Art Déco-style curves. Thunderbike uses original Harley Dav...
Growing demand from consumers for these lightweight vehicles has been reported in Europe, the US and the booming BRIC economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China as well. As a result, car manufacturers worldwide are developing their own urban car models to tap into this burgeoning market. An urban – or city – car is a small, lightweight passenger vehicle intended for...
Adding intelligence to the tools and shopfloor systems will help to simplify the production process and provide better improve efficiency for the production process by managing and checking the tasks the operator is completing. Using the NI System on Module, we will be able to quickly prototype these smart tools using NI’s approach to system design. Today’s aerospace ...
Four different components are used to manufacture the part: steel, glass fiber-reinforced plastic (GFP), a nonwoven carbon fiber mat and thermoplastic tape containing continuous carbon fiber. The nonwoven carbon fiber mat is first thermoformed and provides the basic shape of the seatback. Carbon fiber-containing tapes are then used to increase the strength in specific...
The technique, which has been proven for the first time by researchers at the university, has been published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications. The research proposes a new kind of engine for producing energy based on the Leidenfrost effect – a phenomenon which happens when a liquid comes into near contact with a surface much hotter than its boiling poi...
The first upgrade rolled in mid-August 2014, but didn’t begin much work until 2015. A 30-ton Manitex 30112S has begun to phase out their 28-ton Manitex 2892c. With more capacity, 20 more feet of main boom, and 20 more feet of total tip height, this machine will remain in the same price category as its predecessor. A brand new 33-ton National 1400A replaced an aging ma...
Nissan Europe is testing the prototype of the car coated with the paint which could make car washes a thing of the past. Nissan said it is the first automaker to apply a super-hydrophobic, oleophobic industrial treatment called Ultra-Ever Dry to a vehicle body. The treatment is designed to repel all water-based and some oil-based liquids using a protective top laye...
One area where the additional investment pays off is on the roof of the van. The newer, European-style vans, such as those built by Mercedes-Benz, can be far taller than conventional cargo vans—some high-roof models are now cavernous enough to accommodate a professional basketball player inside. That makes for easier storage but can turn the process of retrieving an exte...
The enhancements, announced Thursday, are intended to minimize the amount of damage involved in car-to-car contact and reduce the amount of debris littering the track — or hurdling over catch fences and into spectator areas. Some drivers, however, sounded skeptical about how much engineers could to with new fastenings and bolts to prevent pieces of carbon fiber from b...
The company said Friday that a recent decision to push back the jet's maiden flight from this spring to a few months later would not delay its commercial deliveries. Workers were conducting hydraulic and other tests on two of the test jets in a cavernous assembly facility; another jet had been sent out for painting. Nobuo Kishi, a vice president of Mitsubishi Aircraft...
The company will be will be receiving an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity, fixed-price contract for Domestic Charter Airlift Services. The combined face for the contracts is around $61.2 million. The project will be worked on through the country and should be finished by Sept. 30. According to the DoD, the “type of appropriation is fiscal year 2015 Transportation ...
Equipped with a 5-liter Cummins V8 that pounds out 310 horsepower and 555 lb-ft of torque, the company's 2016 Titan XD, unveiled just ahead of this year's North American International Auto Show in Detroit, represents a conscious effort at Nissan to serve an open niche between the half-ton and ¾-ton entries and "fill in the white space," as Rich Miller, head of the Titan ...
There were three companies, and their craft, vying for the funds: SpaceX (Crew Dragon), Boeing (CST-100) and Sierra Nevada (Dream Chaser). Only two of three would be picked to receive funding and speculation suggested that SpaceX would be a winner, with Sierra Nevada likely to take the second spot. On Sept. 16, however, we got the news that the odd man out was Sierra Nev...
The SPS IPC Drives on November 25 in Nuremberg marked the launch of the Europe-wide Integrated Drive Systems Roadshow. The tour plan takes in over a dozen European countries and is scheduled to run on into 2016. Under the banner of “Extra Value Integrated”, the IDS truck will be touring with application-specific exhibits and live demos over an area of 65 square meters to...
More than 30,000 visitors, 130,000 kilometers and 290 stops: Siemens is saying goodbye to its Energy Efficiency Roadshow. On its way through Brazil, China and Europe, people were informed on how to optimize industrial processes and to improve competitiveness in a sustainable way. As a result, partnerships were formed and contracts entered. Some of these will be introduce...
This technological step-up will give the flying billboards more speed and passenger-carrying capability than the company had with blimps. But the tire company is also going to continue referring to the airships as Goodyear blimps, even though they aren't. The new aircraft have a rigid structure inside the outer envelope. This lets the three engines be mounted high up on ...
As of March 2015, the model program of the latest generation of the original in the premium segment of small cars will be expanded to include the MINI One First 5 door. As with the new MINI 3 door, the five-door body variant will offer a range of seven engine types to choose from. Like all representatives of the latest model generation, the MINI One First 5 door is po...
Being one of the most customer-centric industries, automotive manufacturers are strained to constantly evolve their product design and manufacturing processes to meet the ever-growing customer demands, without neglecting the environmental requirements. A recent research from McKinsey on the future of global automotive industry suggests, that the global automotive indu...
It is a great time for engineers, as computer aided design and computational analysis allows them to engineer automotive product design and build vehicles that are exceedingly fuel efficient, sleek and glamorous. The vehicle engineering industry has gone through a revolutionary phase with the CAD and CAE advancements, and now engineers can conceive designs and test ca...
In 1993, NHIndustries, mainly owned by the Eurocopter group (now Airbus Helicopters), started to design the NH90, a medium-sized military helicopter. Thirteen years later, it entered service. The pace of technological change has increased so rapidly and the competition has become so fierce that helicopter manufacturers usually have no more than four years to develop t...
The unmanned Atlas rocket — and NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale spacecraft — soared into a clear late-night sky, right on time. Within two hours, all four observatories were flying free. "Just picture-perfect," launch manager Omar Baez said early today. "Everybody's cheering... Can't ask for any more." The quartet of observatories is being placed into an oblong or...
Supported by Singapore Economic Development Board, the new NTU-NXP Smart Mobility Test Bed will test and develop new technologies for vehicles to communicate with each other and with designated roadside infrastructures. Known as V2X (Vehicle-to-Everything) technology, this will push new frontiers in mobility. The agreement was signed today by NTU Chief of Staff and Vi...
The larger of Northrop Grumman's two deals is a $146.6 million cost-plus-incentive-fee Navy contract which will aid the design, development, fabrication, assembly, integration, furnishing, test and evaluation support, and documentation for several systems supporting the E-2D Advanced Hawkeye aircraft. Those systems include: Accelerated Mid-Term Interoperability Improveme...
Weapons’ ability to penetrate armor, however, has advanced faster than armor’s ability to withstand that assault. As a result, achieving even incremental improvements in crew survivability has required significant increases in vehicle mass and cost. Increasingly heavy, less mobile and more expensive armored vehicles hinder rapid deployment and maneuverability in often c...
The test effectively ended the U.S. monopoly on fission-based nuclear weaponry and launched the decades-long arms race that became the hallmark of the Cold War. The natural tendency for the Americans was to attempt to regain the upper hand, either by building more fission weapons in effort to stay ahead of the Soviets, or build a bigger weapon. The bigger weapon would b...
Aluminum maker Alcoa has teamed up with battery developer Phinergy to make a battery that’s capable of powering a car for over 1000 miles (1600 km). The only catch: the battery isn’t rechargeable, at least not in the traditional sense. The Phinergy-Alcoa team is proposing a combination of batteries for electric cars: the main power source would be comprised of recharg...
It is also known for its rapid prototyping capabilities. That was the impetus behind launching its new Mechanical Prototypes Division. Its first project? A full-scale fighter jet engine, but one that will never see the sky. That’s because it’s a Pratt & Whitney F135 engine mockup to be used for maintenance training purposes. It makes perfect sense, when you think abou...
“We are studying airplane improvements that will extend today’s 777 efficiencies and reliability for the next two decades or longer, and the engines are a significant part of that effort,” said Bob Feldmann, vice president and general manager for the 777X development project at Boeing Commercial Airplanes. The Boeing 777 is the world’s most successful twin-engine, lon...
