Year: 2020

By Deepak Sharma

The project intends to use graphene-based bio-medical sensors in integration with existing diagnostic tools or other portable electronic devices such as smartphones to enable real-time and portable disease detection.

Sparc Technologies Ltd (ASX:SPN) has established a new graphene bio-medical division aimed at developing non-invasive graphene-based breath sensing devices for detection of diseases in humans and animals.

Sparc will advance the project together with cornerstone shareholder, strategic partner and leading graphene research centre the University of Adelaide (UA) in order to seek to establish and develop non-invasive sensing devices for human and veterinarian applications.

The focus of the project will be research into graphene-based sensing devices for the detection of a selection of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) present in exhaled breath that are understood to be indicators of disease.

Continue reading… “Sparc sets up graphene sensor project to detect human and animal diseases”

DAN ROBITZSKI

But don’t worry — the company says it can’t see inside your home.

A few months ago, a company called Capella Space launched a satellite capable of taking clear radar images of anywhere in the world, with incredible resolution. It can even see inside some buildings, including spotting airplanes inside hangars — though only in the case of lightweight structures, the company clarified, and not dense ones like high rises or residential homes.

And unlike most of the huge array of surveillance and observational satellites orbiting the Earth, its satellite Capella 2 can snap a clear picture during night or day, rain or shine.

“It turns out that half of the world is in nighttime, and half of the world, on average, is cloudy,” CEO Payam Banazadeh, a former system engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Futurism. “When you combine those two together, about 75 percent of Earth, at any given time, is going to be cloudy, nighttime, or it’s going to be both. It’s invisible to you, and that portion is moving around.”

On Wednesday, Capella launched a platform allowing governmental or private customers to request images of anything in the world — a capability that will only get more powerful with the deployment of six additional satellites next year. Is that creepy from a privacy point of view? Sure. But Banazadeh says that it also plugs numerous holes in the ways scientists and government agencies are currently able to monitor the planet.

Continue reading… “A New Satellite Can Peer Inside Some Buildings, Day or Night”

Fred Lambert 

Volvo Group’s construction equipment division announced that it began deliveries of its first electric construction machinery to customers.

It’s an important step toward electrifying construction machinery.

It’s not just passenger vehicles that are getting electrified. Many other industries are also looking at advancements in batteries and electric powertrains and starting to see how it could benefit them.

Wouldn’t it be nice to reduce emissions and noise pollution and cut down on fuel costs at construction sites? Electric machinery can do that.

Volvo Construction Equipment (Volvo CE) has been early in pushing for the electrification of construction equipment.

In 2018, we reported on the company unveiling several new electric prototypes for an all-electric quarry project.

Last year, they announced that they will stop development of diesel engine-based compact wheel loaders and compact excavators in order to sell electric versions instead.

Today, they are announcing that they started deliveries of their electric construction equipment to actual customers.

Continue reading… “Volvo begins deliveries of its electric construction machinery”

By Daniella Genovese

Walmart announced Tuesday that it will begin using fully driverless trucks in Arkansas next year as it expands its autonomous vehicle pilot program with Gatik.

For the first time, Gatik’s multi-temperature autonomous box trucks will move customer orders on a 2-mile route between a dark store and a neighborhood market in Bentonville without the supervision of a safety driver, according to Tom Ward, Walmart senior vice president of customer products.

A dark store stocks items for fulfillment but isn’t open to the public.

The move “signifies the first ever driverless operation carried out on the supply chain middle mile for both Gatik and Walmart,” Ward said in a statement.

The development comes nearly a year after Walmart and Gatik launched an autonomous vehicle pilot to fulfill orders. Over the past year, the company says it has tested the multi-temperature trucks on a smaller scale in Bentonville in order to see how they may be able to transfer customer orders from a dark store to a live store or one that is open to the public.

The company has driven more than 70,000 operational miles in autonomous mode with a safety driver, Ward said.

Continue reading… “Walmart expands self-driving program with fully driverless vehicles”