Impact Lab – Page 385 – A Laboratory of the Future Human Experience

At 12 Times Faster Than Sound, World’s Fastest Passenger Plane Begins Model-Testing

June 4, 2021

A US-based start-up is designing a hypersonic space plane that could enable people to travel anywhere around the world in just one hour.

Venus Aerospace, a hypersonic space plane start-up, will begin testing three scale models this summer, Bloomberg reported.

Travel on a space plane may seem like a regular airplane journey till the plane reaches cruising altitude. Once at that altitude, the pilot then enables the rocket boosters and the aircraft zooms to the edge of the space at a lightning speed of more than 9,000 mph or about 12 times the speed of sound.

This is the speed that the plane maintains for the next 15 minutes. Soaring through the atmosphere again, the plane slows down, cruises back to the earth, and lands at its destination airport.

In all probability, the hypersonic space plane to be developed by Venus Aerospace will complete these functions in one hour.

Based in the US, Venus Aerospace was founded by the Duggleby couple, Sarah and Andrew Duggleby in 2020. Sarah worked as a code-writing launch engineer at the Virgin Orbit, while Andrew handled the launch, payload, and propulsion operations at the same organization.

Science & Technology News, Space Flight

China’s New Space Station Is Powered by Ion Thrusters

June 4, 2021

The country is betting big on electric spacecraft propulsion.

By VICTOR TANGERMANN

China’s first module of its upcoming Tiangong space station makes use of ion drives, technology that could vastly cut down the time it takes to travel to Mars — and greatly reduce the amount of fuel needed to make that trip, as the South China Morning Post reports.

The module, called Tianhe and launched in late April, is powered by four ion thrusters that use electricity to accelerate ions as a form of propulsion. In fact, the module could soon become the first spacecraft in history to transport humans using the technology, according to SCMP.

Ion drives are orders of magnitude more efficient compared to chemical propulsion. To keep the International Space Station in orbit for a year, the thrusters consume four tons of rocket fuel. With ion thrusters, it’d need just 400 kilograms to stay in orbit for the same amount of time, according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

A trip to Mars could be cut down from eight months to just 39 days.

China is betting big on ion thrusters, hoping to use them not just for its space station but for upcoming satellite constellations and nuclear-powered spacecraft capable of carrying astronauts to Mars as well, according to SCMP.

Military, Science & Technology News

Rocket Delivery Of Cargo Anywhere In An Hour In New Air Force Budget Proposal

June 4, 2021

Next year, the Air Force wants to test a way to move a C-17’s worth of cargo, and potentially personnel, extremely quickly to any location on Earth.

BY JOSEPH TREVITHICK

The U.S. Air Force has released new details about its questionably ambitious plans to develop a capability to send payloads weighing up to 100 tons, including cargo and potentially personnel, roughly equivalent to the maximum load of a C-17 airlifter, anywhere in the world within one hour via a space launch rocketor derivative thereof. The service now wants to demonstrate the basic feasibility of this concept in a real end-to-end test next year.

This and other information is contained in the service’s proposed budget for the 2022 Fiscal Year, which includes a request for nearly $48 million in additional funding for this program. This is an almost five-fold increase over the funding it received for this project for the current fiscal cycle. The Air Force 2022 Fiscal Year budget request, which was released on May 28, 2021, as part of the larger proposed budget for the U.S. military as a whole for that fiscal cycle, also identified the blandly-titled Rocket Cargo program as one of the service’s “Vanguard” efforts. The service first unveiled the concept of Vanguard Programs, a way to identify advanced research and development efforts of particularly high interest, last year. Rocket Cargo is the fourth Vanguard, with the others being the Skyborg initiative to develop an artificial intelligence-driven “computer brain” able to fly various types of future unmanned aircraft, the Golden Horde networked swarming munitions project, and the Navigation Technology Satellite 3 (NTS-3) effort.

Military, Science & Technology News

US Air Force To Use Autonomous Flying Cars to Pick Up The Injured

June 3, 2021

The US Air Force’s flying car

By Fabienne Lang

Using flying cars and eVTOLs could drastically change the way the U.S. Air Force operates in the future.

They could immensely assist medevac situations, for instance, as they could act as flying ambulances by autonomously flying to a remote airfield, landing vertically so that an injured troop member could hop aboard, strap into its wearable technologies to monitor their condition, and fly off to a site where the person can be safely looked after.

That’s one of the visions that the U.S. Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration, and requirements, Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote, has for the future of the flying car, reported Military.com.

Not only could the flying car save lives, but it could also do so while minimizing the Air Force’s carbon footprint, and while saving the Air Force carting heavy fuel around for its aircraft and cars. They could be used to transport VIPs or during National Guard missions for firefighting, people recovery, search and rescue, and aeromedical evacuation, said Hinote.

On top of that, it would enable people to be picked up from hard-to-reach sites, something that’s integral for the Air Force, not only because air fields and runways are targets for enemy fire, but also because sometimes troops are sent far and wide to remote areas. Typically helicopters have done the job in those areas, but again, they have relied on fuel.

3D Printer, Science & Technology News

HACKROD UNVEILS WORLD’S FIRST VIRTUAL REALITY-DESIGNED, AI-ENGINEERED, 3D-PRINTED CAR

June 3, 2021

Cali-based digital manufacturing company Hacked has partnered with Siemens PLM software to create the world’s first car designed in virtual reality, engineered with AI and 3D printed, full size, in structural alloy.

The ‘La Bandita’ speedster is intended to serve as proof of concept for an entirely new industrial design to production methodology. Hackrod’s factory of the future, powered by the Siemens Digital Innovation Platform, will enable individuals, start-ups and small enterprises the unprecedented capability to create the product or their needs or dreams as easily as playing a video game.

With multiple tools from Siemens PLM Software including NX software, and the new cloud-based collaboration software Solid Edge Portal, Hackrod has access to the latest design and engineering tools to rapidly design, test and manufacture transport solutions without the need for massive industrial infrastructure or tooling budgets.

Hackrod is developing a platform to enable truly bespoke aesthetic design to prevail with guaranteed engineering solutions. Their platform leverages virtual reality as a design tool, IoT and machine learning to constantly evolve and perfect engineering systems, and industrial 3D printing to produce optimized hardware.

Energy, Science & Technology News

China Boasts Successful Nuclear Fusion

June 3, 2021

By Irina Slav

Chinese media have reported that researchers working on a nuclear fusion project have succeeded in holding plasma of 120 million degrees Celsius for close to two minutes.

Chinese daily Global Times reports that the so-called artificial sun as the Chinese nuclear fusion project is known also succeeded in maintaining plasma at 160 million degrees Celsius for 20 seconds.

These times, while not very long in absolute terms, are records in the quest for nuclear fusion. The next step would be to maintain these temperatures for as long as a week, according to a physics professor from the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen.

China’s nuclear fusion reactor first madeheadlines in 2019 when Beijing said it would soon begin operations. The reactor—the HL-2M Tokamak—was first powered at the end of last year, and its first achievement was maintaining a temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius for 100 minutes.

Energy, Science & Technology News

China’s “Artificial Sun” Fusion Reactor Just Set a World Record

June 2, 2021

The reactor got more than 10 times hotter than the core of the Sun.

By TONY TRAN

Is it hot in here, or is it just the fusion reactor?

China broke a record with its Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) fusion reactor on Friday when it sustained a plasma temperature of 120 million degrees Celsius for 101 seconds, according to the state-run outlet GlobalTimes. The reactor was also able to sustain a temperature of 160 million degrees Celsius for 20 seconds.

For perspective, the core of our solar system’s Sun “only” reaches about 15 million degrees Celsius, according to Space.com. So, for a moment, EAST got more than 10 times hotter than that.

This marks a big milestone for the EAST reactor, which has been dubbed the “artificial Sun” for its ability to replicate the natural nuclear fusion process of stars. Doing so could help unlock the mystery to creating sustainable, reliable fusion power.

drones, Science & Technology News

Botswana begins medical drone delivery service to prevent maternal deaths

June 2, 2021

By Ishveena Singh

This month, Botswana became the first country in southern Africa, and the third in Africa, to begin the use of medical delivery drones. Their aim? To bring down maternal mortality by delivering life-saving health supplies to hard-to-reach communities in a timely manner.

The initiative, called “Drones for Health,” has been made possible through a collaboration between Botswana’s Ministry of Health and Wellness, Botswana International University of Science and Technology (BIUST), and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

Unlike Ghana and Rwanda, where US-based drone company Zipline has been delivering on-demand medical supplies to remote areas, the drone delivery ecosystem platform for Botswana has been developed in partnership with Dutch drone engineering company Avy.

The Avy Aera drone can travel a distance of 100 km on a single charge, carrying cargo weighing up to 2 kg. An uber-cool, interactive flight simulation page will show you three drones taking off from a BIUST drone port and flying to different communities of Botswana.

Alternative Transportation, Science & Technology News

Space plane aims to take you anywhere on the globe in one hour

June 2, 2021

Space plane aims to take you anywhere on the globe in one hour

A company called Venus Aerospace Corp. is pursuing a hypersonic space plane that has the potential to take people from Los Angeles to Tokyo in about an hour. The trip in their proposed space plane would take off from the ground like a conventional aircraft and fly up to a high cruising altitude. Once at that cruising altitude, a rocket booster would ignite and push the aircraft to the edge of space at more than 9000 mph.

That’s approximately 12 times the speed of sound. The aircraft would travel at that incredible velocity for approximately 15 minutes before gliding against the atmosphere to slow down and eventually landing at a conventional airport just as it took off. Venus was founded by a pair of former Virgin Orbit LLC employees, and the company currently has 15 employees of its own.

Energy, Science & Technology News

Scientists look to capture clean energy from our clothing

June 1, 2021

Could a jacket or a pair of jeans one day power your mobile phone and other electronic devices?

by Craig McManamon , Heriot-Watt University

This is the aim of a multi-disciplined team of scientists including from Heriot-Watt University’s Research Institute for Flexible Materials, who are behind a new project to harvest the kinetic energy generated in clothing through state-of-the-art nano technology.

The academics, all of whom are based in Scotland and Ireland, are attempting to create a friction based wearable autonomous energy system. They will use cutting-edge nanogenerators, which are designed to capture and reuse the kinetic energy in clothing materials created as the wearer moves. If successful, these tiny, unobtrusive devices will be woven into every-day clothing.

The team say their technology could be available as early as 2027 and capable of powering a host of devices such as mobile phones, smart watches and tablets.

Science & Technology News, Tesla

Tesla has activated its in-car camera to monitor drivers using Autopilot

June 1, 2021

By Kirsten Korosec

Tesla has enabled the in-car camera in its Model 3 and Model Y vehicles to monitor drivers when its Autopilot advanced driver assistance system is being used.

In a software update, Tesla indicated the “cabin camera above the rearview mirror can now detect and alert driver inattentiveness while Autopilot is engaged.” Notably, Tesla has a closed loop system for the data, meaning imagery captured by the camera does not leave the car. The system cannot save or transit information unless data sharing is enabled, according to Tesla. The firmware update was cited by a number of Tesla owners, industry watchers and bloggers who are active on Twitter.

Tesla has faced criticism for not activating a driver monitoring system within the vehicle even as evidence mounted that owners were misusing the system. Owners have posted dozens of videos on YouTube and TikTok abusing the Autopilot system — some of whom have filmed themselves sitting in the backseat as the vehicle drives along the highway. Several fatal crashes involving Tesla vehicles that had Autopilot engaged has put more pressure on the company to act.

Until now, Tesla has not used the camera installed in its vehicles and instead relied on sensors in the steering wheel that measured torque — a method that is supposed to require the driver to keep their hands on the wheel. Drivers have documented and shared on social media how to trick the sensors into thinking a human is holding the wheel.

Robots, Science & Technology News

The robot smiles back: Columbia scientists teach robot how to respond to human facial expressions

June 1, 2021

Columbia Engineering researchers use AI to teach robots to make appropriate reactive human facial expressions, an ability that could build trust between humans and their robotic co-workers and care-givers.

BY MARK ALLINSON

While our facial expressions play a huge role in building trust, most robots still sport the blank and static visage of a professional poker player.

With the increasing use of robots in locations where robots and humans need to work closely together, from nursing homes to warehouses and factories, the need for a more responsive, facially realistic robot is growing more urgent.

Long interested in the interactions between robots and humans, researchers in the Creative Machines Lab at Columbia Engineering have been working for five years to create EVA, a new autonomous robot with a soft and expressive face that responds to match the expressions of nearby humans.

The research will be presented at the ICRA conference on May 30, 2021, and the robot blueprints are open-sourced on Hardware-X (April 2021).

“The idea for EVA took shape a few years ago, when my students and I began to notice that the robots in our lab were staring back at us through plastic, googly eyes,” said Hod Lipson, James and Sally Scapa Professor of Innovation (Mechanical Engineering) and director of the Creative Machines Lab.

Lipson observed a similar trend in the grocery store, where he encountered restocking robots wearing name badges, and in one case, decked out in a cozy, hand-knit cap.

“People seemed to be humanizing their robotic colleagues by giving them eyes, an identity, or a name,” he said. “This made us wonder, if eyes and clothing work, why not make a robot that has a super-expressive and responsive human face?”

While this sounds simple, creating a convincing robotic face has been a formidable challenge for roboticists.