kets, mechatronics, industry 4.0

Electric car… Will I reach my destination?

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kets, mechatronics, industry 4.0

You are willing to buy a new car; you are environmentally concerned; the promises of lower operating costs have convinced you; your government subsidizes the purchase of an electric car, BUT…

Range anxiety is a common fear among drivers. It refers to the driver’s worry that the battery charge is low, and the usual electricity sources are unavailable. It’s still perceived to be one of the most significant barriers preventing fleets from going electric.

However, Penn State engineers are working on a battery for you! The researchers developed lithium iron phosphate batteries that have a range of 250 miles and can get charged in 10 minutes. Their work is published in the Nature Energy journal, where they claim that the battery’s long life and rapid recharging are due to its ability to thermally modulate. It heats up in just a little time, reaching the level of 140 degrees Fahrenheit for charge and discharge, whereas it cools down when it is not in use.

“The very fast charge allows us to downsize the battery without incurring range anxiety,” said Chao-Yang Wang, William E. Diefenderfer Chair of mechanical engineering, professor of chemical engineering and professor of materials science and engineering, and director of the Electrochemical Engine Center at Penn State.

A self-heating battery offers a solution to the range anxiety issues of electric car drivers. It uses a thin nickel foil with one end attached to the negative terminal and the other extending outside the cell to create a third terminal. As electrons flow, the battery rapidly heats up the nickel foil through resistance heating and the internal warmth of the battery. Once the battery’s internal temperature is 140°F, the switch opens, and the battery is ready. “With a self-heating method, low-cost materials can be used for the battery’s cathode and anode”, says Wang. The self-heating approach also reduces uneven deposition of lithium on the anode, which can cause lithium spikes that are dangerous.

According to Wang, the smaller batteries produce a large amount of power upon heating, specifically 40 kilowatt-hours and 300 kilowatts of power. An electric vehicle with this battery could go from zero to 60 miles per hour in 3 seconds and would drive like a Porsche. “This is how we are going to change the environment and not contribute to just the luxury cars,” said Wang. “Let everyone afford electric vehicles.”

This seems to be an ideal solution for warm places around the world.

Sources:

https://www.techbriefs.com/component/content/article/tb/stories/blog/38427

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-020-00757-7

https://news.psu.edu/story/643897/2021/01/18/research/inexpensive-battery-charges-rapidly-electric-vehicles-reduces-range

mechatronics, industry 4.0

A shoal of robotic fish performing synchronized swimming

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mechatronics, industry 4.0

Shoals of fish exhibit complex and synchronized behaviour, which helps them find food, migrate and escape predators. The fish do not communicate with each other to agree on what to do next, but their collective behaviour emerges through spontaneous coordination, while each fish is making decisions based on what it sees the others around it do.

This decentralized behavior, self-organization and cooperation have always fascinated scientists, especially robotics experts. Now, for the first time, researchers from the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University in the United States, who published their work in the journal “Science Robotics”, have developed fish-robots that can synchronize their movements in the water like a shoal of real fish, without the slightest external control. It is the first time that the complex collective behavior of submarine robots is achieved without outside intervention.

“Robots often undertake missions in areas inaccessible or dangerous to humans, where human intervention may not be possible. “In these situations, it is really useful for a highly autonomous robotic herd to be self-sufficient, even if things like GPS and Wi-Fi are not underwater,” said researcher Florian Berlinger.

The synchronization of the -up to seven- robotic fish was made possible thanks to a new optical tuning system with blue LED light integrated on them, analogous to the bioluminescence of real fish. Each mechanical fish has two camera-fins and three LED lights. The cameras detect the lights on the surrounding fish and then an algorithm, integrated into each robot, determines the distance and direction of the others, so that each “fish” adjusts its behavior accordingly, e.g., circularly swim in groups.

Not coincidentally, the development of the robotic swarm was done with the support of the US Navy Research Bureau, which -obviously- foresees (and) military applications.

 

Sources:

https://cutt.ly/Fkf7VxL

https://robotics.sciencemag.org/content/6/50/eabd8668

vet, kets, industry 4.0 , mechatronics

Coordination meeting

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vet, kets, industry 4.0 , mechatronics
The NEW METRO coordination meeting was virtually held on the 28th of January, 2021.
 The main issues that were discussed can be summarized as follows:
mechatronics, robotics, industry 4.0

Autonomous vehicle will operate as a shop or office with wheels

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Toyota intends to bring e-Palette into production
mechatronics, robotics, industry 4.0

Toyota hopes that a driverless vehicle that looks more like a transparent container could be used as a moving shop or office. The e-Palette was first unveiled at CES exhibition in Las Vegas in 2018. No one expected then that the strange vehicle would one day go into production. Toyota announced this week that the e-Palette has the potential to become economically viable within a few years.

The electric minivan has 20 seats, which can be folded to free up space. The Japanese carmaker hoped to demonstrate the e-Palette at the Tokyo Olympics, which were scheduled to take place in 2020 summer, but were postponed to 2021 due to the pandemic. Moving on predetermined routes, autonomous vehicles would transport athletes to the Olympic Village.

“We received a lot of questions from people wondering what the fate of e-Palettes would be after the postponement of the Olympics,” said Katie Yamamoto, president of Toyota Connected Company, according to Bloomberg. “There is a great deal of interest in using Palette vehicles to deliver products and transport people,” he claimed. “There is a huge interest in using them as mobile stores and offices,” he said.

Toyota has previously said it plans to launch the vehicle in partnerships with companies such as Amazon, Pizza Hut and Uber.

Sources:  http://bloom.bg/3owUunI , http://bit.ly/2MDXUHZ

mechatronics, robotics, kets

I love you my dearest robot-mate!!!

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Researchers have created a robot that shows signs of empathy for his/her partner!

mechatronics, robotics, kets

This achievement paves the way for robots not only to better communicate with each other but also more “humanely” behave with humans, in the same way, that in a couple one partner can predict the other’s movement.

To elaborate, researchers from the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Columbia University in New York have created a robot that shows signs of empathy, proving that developments in artificial intelligence continue at a rapid pace. According to an article published in the journal Nature, the research team, led by Hond Lipson, a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, created a robot that learns to visually predict how another robot will behave, thus displaying a rudimentary kind of empathy.

The ability of humans and some animals to anticipate the actions of others, facilitates coexistence, cooperation, and the pursuit of common goals. But so far, robots have been lagging in this area. The experiments have shown that one robot was able to predict the target of another robot in the 98% of the cases, just by visually observe its actions and by utilizing the appropriate algorithm. “Our findings show how robots begin to see the world from the perspective of another robot. It’s probably a primitive form of empathy,” said researcher Bojuan Chen.

At the moment, robot behaviors are much simpler than those of humans, but they are expected to improve their ability to “dive into the mind” of another robot, in the same way that the 3-year-old children begin to understand that other people around them have their own goals, needs and views. Of course, for years, humans will be better than robots at “stepping into others’ shoes”.

On the other hand, according to Lipson, ethical questions arise: if technology allows robots to have human-like empathy and be able to guess human thoughts and intentions, they may also learn to manipulate human thoughts.

Is the robots’ era ahead?

Sources:

http://bit.ly/3oaKLDG

https://go.nature.com/2Notbzg

mechatronics, industry 4.0

Boston Dynamics robots said a dancing goodbye to 2020

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Robots shared their joy for leaving behind the tough 2020 and danced skilfully.

mechatronics, industry 4.0

In 2020 Boston Dynamics robots helped doctors treat COVID-19 patients, reminded people to stay safe, and even supervised construction works. Saying goodbye to a difficult year, the company’s robots danced at the headquarters of the company, in a three-minute video to the sound of the 1962 hit “Do You Love Me?“.

The video on the Boston Dynamics YouTube channel already has over 25 million views and more than 141,000 comments. In this video, the dancing skills are highlighted which imply precision, agility, synchronization, maneuvers, smooth movements.

“Our entire team came together to celebrate the start of what we hope will be a better year: Happy New Year to all of us at Boston Dynamics,” the company wrote in its YouTube video.

“Changing your mind about what robots can do” is the slogan of the American robot design company founded in 1992. Its mission is to “create the most advanced robots on Earth, with remarkable mobility, agility, dexterity and speed”.

Source: http://bit.ly/3bFnerU

mechatronics, indystry 4.0, robotics, supermarket

More supermarket tasks to be undertaken by robots

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mechatronics, indystry 4.0, robotics, supermarket

The task of quickly and efficiently packing a bag of groceries of different sizes and shapes without crushing anything is simple and intuitive for humans, albeit is still an in-progress ability for robots.  

It incorporates different skills, such as computer vision, flexibility and robustness of robotic arms and advanced artificial intelligence in order to possess the ability to determine the order and position of packaging the products. Such a matter is tackled by the company Ocado Technology in the warehouses that handle online orders. The company has a sophisticated warehouse in Erith in east London, which is already highly automated.

Hundreds of robots move quickly around a grid, collecting groceries and bringing them to a member of staff who will pack them into boxes, which are then loaded on to trucks for delivery.

Ocado is paying $262m (£198m) for Kindred Systems, a San Francisco-based firm that makes robotic sorting systems that is used in sorting clothes. In addition, it is buying Las Vegas-based Haddington Dynamics for $25m (£19m) which makes lighter-weight, and highly sensitive robotic arms.

James Matthews, the chief executive of Ocado Technology, believes that this technology can be adapted and developed for the grocery sector. “The two systems, we now intend to bring together. It will have some of our machine learning models that is very specific to grocery problems, and it will have some aspects of the Kindred platform that they’ve gone much deeper on.” To explain, Kindred is more advanced on tele-operation, or supervised autonomy, which is where humans monitor and control multiple robots remotely.

Thus, over the next year Ocado will be training the artificial intelligence used by Kindred, on grocery products. The company hopes to have a robot that can replace human pickers within two or three years, but people will not be completely replaced.

“I think we are going to see an acceleration of the deployment of automation in the next three to five years. And so that’s going to take a big bite out of those manual tasks. But I suspect in 10 years, there’s still going to be a sizable portion of activities that are human led,” says Mr Matthews.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54902518

mechatronics, industry 4.0

An invention for the less privileged people

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mechatronics, industry 4.0

A wind turbine that produces both electricity and drinking water is an invention that could ameliorate the daily life of less privileged communities.

Although the goods of electricity and drinking water are taken for granted in the western world, this is not the case for billions of people around the world who continue to lack access to pure drinking water, sanitation, and electricity.  

Many people in India are facing such problems. An indigenous young inventor named Madhu Vajrakarur has come up with a simple but innovative solution. He has developed a wind turbine that produces electricity and clean drinking water from the moisture in the air. The two-in-one wind turbine produces an average of 30KW power and 80-100 litres of water per day. This means it can meet the electricity demands of about 25 households.

The 15-foot-tall wind turbine gathers moisture from the atmosphere. This is directed through a copper pipe, like the ones used in refrigerators, and finally reaches a three-stage filter. To elaborate, there is a vent in the centre of the fan attached to the wind turbine, through which air is taken in. The air is then cooled with the help of the cooling compressor. In this way, the water vapor present in the moist air is converted into water, which is sent through copper pipes down to storage tanks for filtration and purification.

The technology could be especially useful in coastal areas or for small businesses.

For one more time, the motto “necessity is the mother of invention” is validated…

 

Sources:

https://www.inceptivemind.com/madhu-vajrakarur-wind-turbine-produces-both-electricity-drinking-water/16290/

https://www.thebetterindia.com/243765/andhra-pradesh-engineer-innovation-wind-turbine-generates-electricity-drinking-water-ros174/

ai, industry 4.0

New era’s car radar systems spot hazards around corners

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ai, industry 4.0

Radars equipped with state-of-the-art sensors contribute to the direction of manufacturing safer autonomous cars.

The concept of possessing self-driving vehicles is not far away. One of the major issues to be taken into account is that of safety. No compromises should be made regarding this crucial and sensitive matter. Until now, the research and manufacturing community has developed a variety of sensor systems that allow cars to detect other objects on the road. Most of them make use of visible or near-infrared light. Such sensors that are preventing collisions are now common in modern cars.

However, optical sensing seems not to be practical or effective in spotting items out of the car’s line of sight. They need to utilize high-powered lasers to, set aside the fact that they are restricted to short ranges.

Researchers from Princeton University combined artificial intelligence and radars to develop a new radar system that can be easily integrated into today’s vehicles. Its operating principle is based on the Doppler effect. More specifically, a Doppler radar is used to bounce radio waves off surfaces such as buildings and parked automobiles. Mounted in front of the vehicle, they emit a radar signal that hits the surface at an angle, so its reflection rebounds off like a cue ball hitting the wall of a pool table.

The signal goes on to strike objects hidden around the corner. Some of the radar signals bounce back to detectors mounted on the car, allowing the system to see objects around the corner and determine the speed of the object and the direction of movement. In real-world applications, a driver or autonomous driving system will be alerted to potential hazards.

To allow the system to distinguish objects, the team processed part of the radar signal that standard radars consider background noise rather than useful information. The team applied artificial intelligence techniques to refine the processing and read the images. The computer running the system had to learn to recognize cyclists and pedestrians from a very sparse amount of data.The system currently detects pedestrians and cyclists because the engineers felt those were the most challenging objects due to their small size and varied shape and motion. The system could be adjusted to detect vehicles as well.

“In terms of integration and bringing it to market, it requires a lot of engineering. But the technology is there, so there is the potential for seeing this very soon in vehicles”, said Felix Heide, an assistant professor of computer science at Princeton University. 

 

 

Sources:

https://www.techbriefs.com/component/content/article/tb/pub/techbriefs/imaging/37985

https://www.princeton.edu/news/2020/06/25/new-radar-allows-cars-spot-hazards-around-corners

mechatronics

Robotic surgery in gynaecology

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mechatronics

Robotic surgery is an important technological innovation in the field of medicine, which comes to evolve and go beyond laparoscopy.

It is a minimally invasive surgical technique that allows the performance of complex operations, through incisions in the skin that are less than 1 cm. Robotic systems are used exclusively by highly specialized surgeons and allow complex abdominal surgeries to be performed with great safety.

Robotic surgery finds application in many medical specialties such as gynaecology, general surgery and urology. In particular, there are diseases in which robotic surgery is the only minimally invasive technique that can be applied and this fact proves the safety and effectiveness of these operations. In the case of gynaecological surgeries, robotic techniques are used to maintain and restore fertility but also for gynaecological cancer.

Robotic surgery: the modern laparoscopy

Robotic surgery retains all the advantages of traditional laparoscopy and in addition ensures minimal postoperative pain, very little blood loss and a lower rate of surgical complications. The vast majority of surgeries require 3 or 4 incisions of 8 mm and one night in the hospital. The patient returns home the next day from the surgery with the appropriate treatment.

The DaVinci robotic system was first approved by the FDA in 2005 and has since helped surgeons achieve better and safer surgical results. Robotic surgeries allow 3D vision, complete freedom of movement of surgical instruments, while reducing the surgeon’s physical fatigue and allow operations with very low intra-abdominal pressures, thus limiting the anaesthesia complications. What is more, robotic surgeries are the ideal method for patients with increased body weight, who until now could not be operated with traditional laparoscopy.

During the pandemic, the first concern is the health of patients and hospital staff. Robotic gynaecological surgeries continue to be performed after ensuring that all the international safety protocols are faithfully followed. 

The Society of European Robotic Gynaecological Surgery (SERGS) declared that “… a great advantage of using a robotic platform is the fact that in times of extreme shortage of hospital beds hospital stay can be minimized also for urgent patients that need (radical) complex procedures that might not or less be feasible with conventional laparoscopy. In conclusion, RAS may help in minimizing the risk for contamination of healthcare providers and to make optimal use of residual resources”.

The following table depicts a risk comparison of robot assisted, conventional laparoscopic and open surgery under COVID-19 circumstances.

mechatronics

Source:

https://www.iefimerida.gr/ygeia/ti-einai-rompotiki-heiroyrgiki-sti-gynaikologia

https://pc.ejgo.org/DOIx.php?id=10.3802/jgo.2020.31.e59