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.

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.

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.

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.

"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"  

Oyster, Wave Energy Project

Wave/Tidal energy is something which has a huge amount of energy stored in it but its not been harnessed on a large scale till now. Now a company by the name  Aquamarine Power  has developed a power plant by the name Oyster. Its a pretty simple idea so to say but its very effective.

The device is a pretty simple hydraulic pump which is connected to a wide hinged flap.The hinged flap moves along with the waves in the sea, thus creating a movement in the hydraulic piston; this pumps the water through underground pipes to electric turbine where it is converted into useful electricity.The oyster is attached at the sea  bed and pops 10mts above water.

Diabetes monitoring made easier

Diabetes is one of the most increasing body ailments in the modern world. Reports say that, India will be the Diabetics capital of the world. Now a diabetic patient has to go through a lot of pain for check up and some have to go through it on a daily basis. Well, one thing is for sure, what I believe is the field of medicine has always been supported by Engineering. Doctor can do nothing until they have reports.

So what we have is another ingenious idea from Engineers this time it’s from India. A team from The Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai (IIT-B); The leader of the research is Prof. Rohit Srivastava and a group of students have developed an Implantable glucose Bio sensor using nanotechnology. Once injected the bio sensor would help monitor blood sugar levels for up to six months using an external hand held device. 

Cyborg Insects

This is something very interesting. Ever thought if you could control an insect or an animal with a remote control? Sounds a bit cruel?, maybe it is, but that’s what a team of engineers at the University of California,Berkeley have already made possible. It’s a part of a program funded by the Pentagon’s Defence Advanced Research project Agency (DARPA). This project is led by Hirotaka Sato and Michel Maharbiz. The basic aim of the project is to create fully remote controlled insects. These insect will be fitted with tiny cameras looking for survivors after disaster or acting as the ultimate spy.


Basically, the team implanted electrodes into the brain and muscles of specific species of Green beetles, one african and an American one. Both respond to the simulations in almost the same way but the African species is larger and it could easily lift the weight of the electronics and the battery. This beetle can grow  as big as the size of the an average human palm.

Google Go

Google is one company that has almost stepped into every online business possible. More over the products it comes up with is always free and good in quality. At a personal level, I love Google for the services it provides and almost everyone in the world does.

Now google has also come up with a new programming language called "GO" the programming language they say will help boost performance of both computing power and programming abilities. The language is still experimental. Its a big news for developers.  
Google says that the language has the best feature and security power like C++ and dynamics and speed like Python.

New Opensource platform from Samsung

Opensource  is slowly gaining ground in the mobile market we have the Google Android which came in around 2007. It was not an instant hit as a lot of people and analyst expected it to be but by now we have a lot of mobile manufacturers jumping on the android for mobile platform.

But now SAMSUNG yes you heard it right the Korean Mobile and other digital hardware manufacturer has also come up with an OPENSOURCE platform which the company clams will be used in all their new upcoming handsets in the year 2010.

For those people who don’t know what opensource is, well most of the platforms have restriction for development of applications but in an opensource platform anyone who wishes to create an application can do it by just downloading a SDK (Software development kit) and registering as a developer online. The application is made available for everyone to download once it is approved.

Minoru 3D

3D technology has been present in the market for a decent amount of time now but it’s not yet used on a large scale and wasn’t available for general public. We only had 3D movies.
 

But now we have the “Minoru 3D” the world’s first consumer webcam. It’s from a Company by the name Nova. Minoru means Real in Japanese .
 

The Minoru is a very good webcam it has a good design and it’s pretty flexible, you can move it easily and adjust it as needed. It actually has 2 cams on it and the distance between them is similar to that of the human eyes to get a perfect 3D view just like a real object in front of your eyes.

I-Driver is here, drive your car via I-phone

Smartphones have come a long way these days. You can almost do any given task through a smartphone  whether its shoothing a video or surfing the internet  etc etc. Smartphone have the same kind of processing power and memory in comparison to the laptop 5yrs back. Now we have smartphone which have a 1ghz+ processor and upto 512MB system memory

We all know the iPhone from Apple is one of the biggest craze in the smartphone market. At a personal note, I m not a big fan of Apple products but the iPhone is a descent gadget.

There seems to be no limit to what our smartphones can do these days . 

Robotics Group of the Institute of Computer Science at the Freie Universität in Berlin, Germany, have developed an application for the iphone called  I-Driver. Any guesses ? 

Actually they have developed/modified a car which they call the ‘Sprit of Berlin’ this car is equipped with an array of 3D sensors  a dashboard camera GPS, WiFi and other equipment which helps control the car.

Nano technology

What is Nano technology?

Actually just like meters, cm,”nano” is a measurement scale it is 1billionth part of a meter. In practical terms we can say that if we say the earth is 1mt in size then a marble is 1 nano. But what can we do with so small objects which we cant even see with our naked eyes?

How it came? 
The whole business of nano technology or the technology that works at the molecular level came into existence by a speech given by a Nobel prize winning Physicist Richard Feynman, in the year 1959, its not something very new.

The Need for Nano technology

As I said earlier what is the need to go so small? Actually the applications are endless from Medical to Engineering, from military to surveillance

Applications in Medicine

When it comes to medicine we can say its like “swallowing the doctor". In the future we will come across something called nanobots or ultra small robots these will be like man made and controlled micro machines, these bots will be injected inside our body in hundreds or thousands in quantity they will gather data about various things in our body. The doctor will just have a look at the data and give you a necessary treatment for a certain ailment. Doctors will be able to destroy the Cancer tissues as they are created and finally incision surgeries will be history.

Application in Engineering

When we talk about engineering the application are limitless. It can bring a wide variety of changes in all fields of engineering. From computers to production to construction everything will get simpler and cost effective. For example – An Intel 4004 microprocessor integrated circuit was 10 microns or 10,000 nm in width.Today Intel’s processors have I.C. 0.065 microns or 65 nm of line widths. If we compare, the width of a human hair is approximately 100 microns or 1000,000 nm. In the future we will have processors which have a very small size are energy efficient and which are cheap as a result more and more devices will be equipped with microprocessors.

Tactical or military applications 
When it comes to military application weapons and equipment will get smatter. Surveillance will get very simple as Surveillance devices will be small nanobots which will be difficult to detect and hence the bad guys won’t be able to execute their bad missions

Other applications 
In the future the paint on your car or wall will be like skin which would immediately heal itself when it gets damaged. Space travel may get simpler and we would get to know our universe in a better way.this may sound like science fiction but it is very true! 
There are a lot of application of nano technology in the field of paint and material science Nano technology is a topic which is vast and a lot of thing are out of scope to explain in this blog.
Its only a matter of time when we will be taken into the nano age!

Hypersonic Sound- the future of sound

What is sound?

Sound as we hear it is a disturbance which is created in the air due to a vibrating body.

Now sound is classified into 3 basic types

1)      Infrasonic  (Less than 20Hz)

2)      Audible sound (20Hz to 20,000Hz)

3)      Ultrasonic sound (More than 20,000Hz)

Hypersonic  Sound

Now you might be wondering what is this Hypersonic  Sound..

Hypersonic  sound is a landmark and groundbreaking invention invented by an American inventor  Woody Norris. 

To explain it in a simple way, consider a light bulb in a dark room. When you turn on the light, naturally the whole room is light up. But when we talk about a projector or a laser for that matter we only see a focused beam of light from a source.Similarly a normal speaker creates sound and it’s audible across the whole area it reaches. Now getting back to Hypersonic sound we can say it’s similar to a beam of sound just like a laser beam! What I mean is the sound created by a Hypersonic speaker can be only heard if it is pointed towards your ears. i.e. if you come in the focus of the speaker. Isn’t it cool? If your watching T.V. with a hypersonic speaker, only the people coming in the focus of the speaker can hear the sound  everyone else around wont be able to hear any sound. 
(No more fights!!)

How it works?

It makes use of ultrasonic frequencies; they are very directional as their wavelength is very short.So Mr. Woody Norris figured a way to convert standard audio content to ultrasonic levels, this audio then demodulates in a certain way in the air and turns into audible sound. In a  Hypersonic  speaker there are billions of tiny speakers which create the focused sound unlike a normal speaker which just has a single speaker.

Applications

This is a very great invention and can have great applications which we can’t even imagine. Mr. Norris also created a harmless weapon called LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device),which can emit discomforting sound to irritate the enemy and make him virtually paralyzed, without the need to injure or kill.Its alraedy in use in Iraq.This is can be very helpful in modern urban warfare. It also has  great applications in the entertainment industry. This is a new technology and its applications are still to be discovered completely. 
Mr.Woody also runs a company by the name  American technology corporation

Bladeless Fan

The latest thing making air waves around is a Bladeless Fan created by Sir James Dyson(British). Of course its created a lot of theories about its working,but the fact it still has blades. But..on the inside of the tube(cylinder) like structure or the stem.

The bladeless design is better as it focuses air rather than throwing it in front and around the turbines.

The fan has a Corona which is designed in such a way that it distributes the air created by the real turbine fan on the inside.In engineering terms we rather call it fixed blades.The fixed blade (corona) distributes the air evenly.It has a sort of aerofoil (Aircraft wing shaped)shape on the inside. It has set a platform for its future applications in various fields.

The air which passes the corona creates a draft of air and drags in more air.

This desktop fan is pretty good if you have small  kids at home who tend to put fingers in the blade and injure them self.

Although this is an innovation there are also speculations on the patent rights as this fan is almost similar to a fan created by a Japanese inventor in the year 1981 (I guess the patent rights have been declined). The fan costs a very steep $300 for a 10inch model and $330 for a 12inch model. Its not really worth unless you are a crazy gadget freak and have money to spare.

Claytronics

In terminator 2(1991) the villain T1000 could acquire any shape be it a bike or a cop or a pair of aviator sunglasses.Tommaso Toffoli and Norman Margolus first coined the term in their book; Programmable matter:Concepts and Realization.

A subset of broader sciences of programmable matter,Claytronics is the name given to the research being conducted at the School of Computer Sciences of the Carnegie Mellon University. Catoms(clay+atoms) or reconfigurable atoms the fundamental  building blocks of an emerging engineered world.

Basing the entire concept on the electrostatic conversation among these sand grain-sized particles,the science of programmable matter aims at giving tangible shapes to information and making the impossible real
The concept is a bit confusing and sounds unrealistic---imagine your coffee mug converting in your watch or into your mobile phone or say your laptop. Its one technology which uses;brings almost all fields of Engineering together.

We have already seen this happen in movies like Transformers and District 9.

The technology is very premature to bring promising prototypes yet,but it has already aroused hope in the industrial fields ranging from Defense to health care, entertainment to construction.

The day may not be far when jobs like agriculture and animal husbandry become redundant because by just manipulating the atoms we will create what we want.In modern society anything is possible if a chip made from something like silicon(sand) can perform so many calculations and tasks why not this is possible.

Lotus's True Hybrid Engine

What is a Hybrid engine??

Hybrid engine's are a special type of engines which have two sources of power.The most popular hybrid engines these days are gas electric. They combine the power of non polluting  electric motor with gas engine.The gas engine and brakes (regenerative braking) help keep the batteries charged.
Generally, in a full hybrid, the electric motor takes control of the car when its cruising, or when slowly accelerating. When more power is necessary , the gas engine comes in to give the acceleration expected.By giving the electric motor to take control hybrids are able to a get better fuel economy than their standard counterparts with only gas engines. But since a lot of the energy is conserved when the car is braking, hybrid cars  give better mileage in city driving. Which is just opposite case in gas cars.

Lotus's Hybrid Engine

Lotus has come up with a new engine which they will setup a in a hybrid vehicle. The  engine made its debut in a concept segment that was at the biggest motor show the Frankfurt Motor Show. The engine features include all aluminum 1.2L engine and has 3-cylinders, It will be used in the Range Extender unit.

The new series hybrids are being developed with special technology, it makes sense that one important part of the power train—the engine is been designed and engineered for the purpose, isnt’t it?

It’s a fact that most of the Hybrid cars make use of regular existing engines with adaptation and minor tweaks. As a result the efficiency is compromised. But lotus has considered this point and has made a special engine for its new Range extender unit. The engine weighs just around 56kg in mass which is really great thanks to its all aluminum body.

It has an optimized twin-valve port-fuel injection,combustion system that has high thermal efficiency, low fuel consumption, multi-fuel capability [methanol  or ethanol] and a 35KW peak output from a 1.2L ,low-cost architecture. This was said by Lotus Engineerings Technical Director Simon Wood  in an interview.


Technical specs of the Engine

General – 1.2 L, 2 valves,3-cylinder,SOHC

* Belt drive

* All aluminum

* Balance shaft

Bore and Stroke                       –   75.0 x 90.0(Millimeter)

Engines Compression ratio        –  10:1

Maximum power produced        –  35 KW (47 BHP) @ 3500 RPM

Maximum Speed of the Engine  – 3500 RPM 
Construction                           – Mono block with Exhaust Manifold Integrated

Fuel System                             – Lotus EMS,Port fuel injection system

Fuel                                        – methanol/ethanol

Weight                                    – 56 kg

The engine can runs either on alcohol-based fuels or gasoline. No word yet from Lotus on a possible production vehicle, Lotus also helped develop the Tesla Roadster's chassis and it builds on a contract basis in the past.

Moto Cliq

Every tech savvy person by now know about Google's Android platform for mobile phones and internet devices.

Its almost been a couple of years by now since its release, Now we are seeing big manufacturers coming up with their handsets.

It definitely is a platform with huge potential cause its open source .

Anyone can develop applications for it and hence we are already seeing a lot of free apps.The handset manufacturer Motorola unveiled its first Google Android device, the Motorola Cliq, to a packed house at the Mobilize '09 conference in San Francisco.

Definitely the company has  huge expectation on this handset.

The company is already going through a lot of ups and downs an has been lagging behind competition.

Moto Cliq (model name MB220)

The handset by looks great it has a sliding full qwerty keyboard and a bright touch screen.Motorola has also developed an app called  "MotoBlur" (Motorolablur).

Motoblur is an app and service that syncs information from all the various connections you have in your daily life,Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, and your e-mail accounts, and automatically give updates to your home screen.
You can even comment on a status update right from your homescreen with having to open any app.

One great aspect of Motoblur is that it backs up all your data to a Motorola-run server, so even if your phone gets lost or stolen you can remotely wipe your data ,all your information will be backed up to the server. You can recover all your data on a new handset to same as the time you lost it.

Physical design

Measurements and build
The Cliq features a slider design and dimensions are 4.49 inch tall by 2.28 inch wide by 0.62 inch thick and it weighs 5.6 ounces. The size is decent ,neither too small or too big, but more than anything, the build quality of the phone is impressive.

It has a really solid construction and just feels like a well-made handset.
 

Touch screen
There's a 3.1-inch HVGA touch screen on the front with a 320x480 pixel resolution. It's not the sharpest ,but still, the display is very clear and vibrant. The device, the touch screen is responsive. You also get several navigation buttons below the display.
 

Keyboard
When you slide open the phone, you will be welcomed by the Motorola Cliq's full QWERTY keyboard,which  look excellent. The buttons are a good size and have a nice bubbly shape to them. It ranks pretty high in our list of QWERTY devices as far as the keyboard.

Motorola Cliq’s official features and specs include:

• Android 1.5 OS
• 163.00 grams (5.7 oz)
• WCDMA 900/1700/2100, HSDPA 7.2 Mbps
• GSM 850/900/1800/1900
• 3.1 inch, 320 x 480 pixels touchscreen display
• Custom homescreen with Live Widgets
• Android Market
• GPS, Turn by Turn directions, Google Maps with Street View, E-Compass
• Wi-Fi
• Android HTML Webkit browser
• 3.5mm headset jack
• Bluetooth
• 5MP autofocus camera
• Qualcomm MSM7201A Processor, 528 MHz
• 256MB RAM, 512MB ROM
• 2GB MicroSD card in the box
• 1420 mAh battery
• Talk-time: up to 6 hours of continuous talk time
• Standby time: up to 13.5 days
• 114 x 58 x 15.6 mm (4.49 x 2.28 x 0.61 in)

We’ll probably find out the official price in the fourth quarter of this year, when the Cliq should go on sale.

Intel Atom

Intel Atom Background
 

Intel Atom is new the new range of processors from Intel.
These processors are out to replace the older Celeron brand by Intel for several ranges of x86 CPU targeted at low cost personal computers. These processors run all IA32 computer applications,but their performance is lower when compared to other higher-priced Intel CPU brands.

 

• Some Tech Specs
 

Produced-                                               From April 1998 to present
Common manufacturer                            Intel
Socket(s)                                                LGA 775,Slot1, Socket 370,478
FSB speeds-                                            66 MHz to 800 MT/s
Max.CPUclock -                                       266 MHz to3.6GHz 
Instruction set-                                       x86-64,x86
Microarchitecture-                                  NetBurst, Cor,P6 
Min. feature size-                                   250 nm to 65 nm

Intel Atom

                                  

The Intel Atom is Intel's line of low-power, low-cost and low-performance x86 and x86-64
microprocessors. Atom, with code-name's of Silverthorne and Diamondville, was first announced on March 2, 2008.
The Intel Atom processor is the smallest processor ever from Intel and has been designed with the world's most tiny transistors and manufactured on industries latest 45NM  High-K technology. The Intel Atom processors are designed for simple,netbooks and nettops at affordable rates netbooks and nettops offer high device mobility for a better experience and longer battery life in case of netbooks.They are strong pretty rugged and small and sleek in design, and offers freedom and extension of being wireless.
Great for Internet, these devices and are an affordable option for, photo,video, education and viewing, social networking,e-mail, messaging, browsing,voice over IP and numerous other Internet applications.

• Some Tech Specs-
Core name(s) -                                            Diamondville,Silverthorne

Package(s) -                                                441-ball μFCBGA 
Produced -                                                 2008–present

Instruction set -                                         SSE, SSE3,SSE2,x86-64,x86,MMX
Common manufacturer(s) -                          Intel
Max. CPU clock -                                         800 MHz to 2 GHz
FSB speeds -                                               400 MHz to 667 MHz
Cores -                                                       1, 2
Min. feature size -                                      45nm

Why Intel Atom??

Intel Atom is one of the most power efficient processor in the world.
It is Designed for decreasing power consumption,Atom has many features present in Core 2 processors for lower power consumption such as Dynamic cache sizing & Enhanced Speed Step technology. The processors also utilize many new features and techniques - "clock gating"  which switches off system clock and changes it to idle logic blocks, CMOS Front Side Bus and others for energy efficiency, As the result, the Atom CPU have a much lower Thermal Design Power (TDP) than previous generation of low power processors.
All Atom processors are manufactured in small form factor I.E.  22mm x 22mm for all and 13mm x 14mm for the Z series.
With file sharing and higher system up times on the rise these days you can't afford to keep a power guzzling Quad core / Core i7 P.C.s Turned on for hours or days or weeks.. They consume a lot of power and there is hardly any need for the huge processing power. Its not green at all .You can instead assemble a cheap Intel atom system and and run it at 5to10% of the power needed by mainstream systems.Plus these is less need of space considering the itx form factor which is available now.
You can recover the price of your hardware by the power cost saving in a couple of year or even less for that matter.

Here's a list of Atom Processors

Intel Atom CPU chart

The chart below includes information on almost all Atom microprocessors. 
Intel Atom processors:

	Model↑	Core    name	Freq.         (MHz)	FSB  (MHz)	L2 cache (KB)	Cores	TDP (Watt)		Core              Voltage    (V)
	Z550	Silverthorne	2000	533	512	1	2.4 / 2.64		1.1
	Z540	Silverthorne	1867	533	512	1	2.4 / 2.64		1.1
	Z530P	Silverthorne	1600	533	512	1	2 / 2.2		1.1
	Z530	Silverthorne	1600	533	512	1	2 / 2.2		1.1
	Z520PT	Silverthorne	1333	533	512	1	2 / 2.2		0.9 - 1.1
	Z520	Silverthorne	1333	533	512	1	2 / 2.2		1.1
	Z515	Silverthorne	800	400	512	1	0.65		1.1
	Z510PT	Silverthorne	1100	400	512	1	2 / 2.2		0.9 - 1.1
	Z510P	Silverthorne	1100	400	512	1	2 / 2.2		1.1
	Z510	Silverthorne	1100	400	512	1	2		1.1
	Z500	Silverthorne	800	400	512	1	0.65		0.85
	N280	Diamondville	1667	667	512	1	2.5		0.9 - 1.1625
	N270	Diamondville	1600	533	512	1	2.5		1.1
	330	Diamondville	1600	533	1024	2	8		1.1
	230	Diamondville	1600	533	512	1	4		0.7 - 1.2

This Video From Intel will help you understand better

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