My Diary

New Robot Swims With No Motor and No Battery Caltech researchers have successfully engineered mini robots that can propel themselves and navigate their way through water using their own bodies' reactions to different temperatures. The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) announced in a  paper  published in the   Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences  this week that its engineers in collaboration with ETH Zurich have successfully developed robots that can swim without a motor or even a power supply. These first-of-their-kind aquatic robots use self-propulsion to navigate through the water. The philosophy behind the devices is rather simply albeit ingenious. The aquatic machines are made from the material that deforms with temperature changes, shrinking and expanding to propel these mini robots through the water as if they were swimming. "Our examples show that we can use structured materials that deform in response to enviro...

Meet the hydrogen-powered car trying to take on Tesla ·         Riversimple has developed a hydrogen-powered car that it hopes will be a viable alternative to electric vehicles. ·         The car, called Rasa, runs on 1.5 kilograms of hydrogen and can go 300 miles. ·         Riversimple is currently producing a handful of cars with the aim of having mass production by 2020. While automakers are fixated on developing the next generation of electric cars, one British firm has other ideas. Riversimple is hoping that its hydrogen-powered two-seater car, which has a futuristic design crossed with retro traits, might be able to offer a viable alternative to electric vehicles. The Wales-based company has created a car called Rasa. It says it runs on 1.5 kilograms of hydrogen and can go 300 miles. The vehicle's engineering is very different to other cars on the market...

Morocco to switch on first phase of world's largest solar plant Desert complex will provide electricity for more than 1 million people when complete, helping African country to supply most of its energy from renewables by 2030 Morocco’s king will switch on the first phase of a concentrated solar power plant on Thursday that will become the world’s largest when completed. The power station on the edge of the Saharan desert will be the size of the country’s capital city by the time it is finished in 2018, and provide electricity for 1.1 million people. After it is switched on, the plant will initially provide 650,000 local people with solar electricity from dawn until three hours after sunset.  “It is a very, very significant project in  Africa ,” said Mafalda Duarte, the manager of Climate Investment Funds (CIF), which provided $435m (£300m) of the $9bn project’s funding. “Morocco is showing real leadership and bringing the cost of the technology down in...

New Bosch tech makes diesel engines far less polluting German engineering firm Bosch has developed technology that uses currently available hardware to drastically bring down nitrous oxide (NOx) emission in diesel cars. The sales of diesel cars have tumbled in the recent months as regulators aim to lower the output of NOx; the gas is harmful to humans and is associated with respiratory problems in urban environments. Bosch claims that it has developed a solution that not only reduces NOx output in diesel engines but practically eliminates it so it falls to a point that’s almost a tenth of the next-generation limits. “We call our system active thermal management because it keeps the most important part of the diesel exhaust, the exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) system, running at its optimal temperature,” Bosch diesel division development boss Michael Krüger told our sister publication Autocar UK. EGRs work best when they are heated by waste gases to more than 200degC, but Krü...

The Countries With The Highest Density Of Industrial Robots  Across the world, the pace of industrial automation is steadily accelerating. According to  the International Federation of Robotics , there were 66 installed industrial robots per 10,000 employees globally in 2015 and that increased to 74 in 2016. Broken down by region, average robot density in Europe is 99 units per 10,000 workers, while's it's 84 in the Americas and 63 in Asia. Even though China has recorded the most dynamic development of robot density in recent years, South Korea has the highest level of density of any country on the planet. In 2016, South Korea had 631 industrial robots per 10,000 employees and that's primarily due to the continued installation of high volume robots in the electronics and manufacturing sectors. Singapore comes second with 488 robots per 10,000 employees, 90 percent of which are installed in its electronics industry. In Germany and Japan, two countries renowned for th...

Scientists find use of fly ash in mosquito control Fly ash, a harmful byproduct of coal-based power generation, has found a new use - mosquito control. Scientists at Vector Control Research Centre (VCRC) of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and Pondicherry University have successfully used fly ash as a carrier for  Bacillus Thuringiensis Israelensis  (Bti), a bio-pesticide used for killing larvae of many insects. The results of the study have been published in  Indian Journal of Medical Research . The researchers have found Bti formulation containing fly ash as carrier and 1 per cent carboxymethyl cellulose as additive to be effective against mosquito larvae. Bti is mainly derived from microbial cultures and is known to produce proteins that act against pests of agriculture and medical importance. Its use against mosquitoes responsible for transmitting malaria, dengue, yellow fever and filariasis has picked a great deal in recent years. It is consi...

a subsidiary of Hyundai Motor Group that manufactures automotive parts in South Korea, has opened a 3D printing lab, the Design Model Workshop, which has the capacity to 3D print customized vehicle parts. It is South Korea’s first design research facility launched by an automotive component supplier. Prototyping 3D printed parts on clay models The workshop is the result of a $2.8 million investment from Hyundai Mobis. The lab occupies 430 square meters at Hyundai’s Mabuk Technical Center, in Yongin, South Korea. The facility is equipped with a powder 3D printer, as well as a range of cutting-edge design machines, including a clay model processing machine, which is capable of creating full-size clay vehicles. The clay model processing machine takes three weeks to produce a full-size car model, accurate to 0.05mm. This is a subtractive process, where a robot arm cuts into a block of clay before color and texture are added, creating a model visually identical to the actual car to ...