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Drones To Have Intel Inside
Intel is taking its competitive game up a notch by investing in its own drones.
Intel has written a check for more than US$60 million to Yuneec International, a Chinese aviation company and drone maker.
This is not the first time that the Chipmaker has invested in drones. It has written smaller amounts for the drone makers Airware and PrecisionHawk. The Yuneec deal is its largest investment in a drone company yet.
Apparently Intel thinks that drones are potential computing platforms for its processors.
Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said he believed in a smart and connected world. And one of the best ways to bring that smart and connected world to everyone and everywhere has been drones.
Amazon and Google are developing drones as they seek new ways to deliver items to consumers, Intel just wants to make sure that its chips are delivering the payload. There is no indication that it is building a secret airforce which it will use to take down competition – that would be silly.
Yuneec makes a range of drones built for aerial photography and imaging. Its technology also powers manned electric aircraft.
Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/drones-to-have-intel-inside.html
Researchers Build Flying Robot
December 4, 2013 by admin
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Researchers say they have assembled a flying robot. It’s not designed to fly like a bird or an insect, but was built to simulate the movements of a swimming jellyfish.
Scientists at New York University say they built the small, flying vehicle to move like the boneless, pulsating, water-dwelling jellyfish.
Leif Ristroph, a post-doctoral student at NYU and a lead researcher on the project, explained that previous flying robots were based on the flight of birds or insects, such as flies.
Last spring, for example, Harvard University researchers announced that they had built an insect-like robot that flies by flapping its wings. The flying robot is so small it has about 1/30th the weight of a U.S. penny.
Before the Harvard work was announced, researchers at the University of Sheffield and the University of Sussex in England worked together to study thebrains of honey bees in an attempt to build an autonomous flying robot.
By creating models of the systems in a bee’s brain that control vision and sense of smell, scientists hope to build a robot that would be able to sense and act as autonomously as a bee.
The problem with those designs, though, is that the flapping wing of a fly is inherently unstable, Ristroph noted.
“To stay in flight and to maneuver, a fly must constantly monitor its environment to sense every gust of wind or approaching predator, adjusting its flying motion to respond within fractions of a second,” Ristroph said. “To recreate that sort of complex control in a mechanical device — and to squeeze it into a small robotic frame — is extremely difficult.”
To get beyond those challenges, Ristroph built a prototype robot that is 8 centimeters wide and weighs two grams. The robot flies by flapping four wings arranged like petals on a flower that pulsate up and down, resembling the flying motion of a moth.
The machine, according to NYU, can hover and fly in a particular direction.
There is more work still to be done. Ristroph reported that his prototype doesn’t have a battery but is attached to an external power source. It also can’t steer, either autonomously or via remote control.
Can Robots Run On (NH2)2CO?
November 19, 2013 by admin
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Scientists have discovered a way to power future robots using an unusual source — urine.
Researchers at the University of the West of England, Bristol and the University of Bristol collaborated to build a system that will enable robots to function without batteries or being plugged into an electrical outlet.
Based on the functioning of the human heart, the system is designed to pump urine into the robot’s “engine room,” converting the waste into electricity and enabling the robot to function completely on its own.
Scientists are hoping the system, which can hold 24.5 ml of urine, could be used to power future generations of robots, or what they’re calling EcoBots.
“In the city environment, they could re-charge using urine from urinals in public lavatories,” said Peter Walters, a researcher with the University of the West of England. “In rural environments, liquid waste effluent could be collected from farms.”
In the past 10 years, researchers have built four generations of EcoBots, each able to use microorganisms to digest the waste material and generate electricity from it, the university said.
Along with using human and animal urine, the robotic system also can create power by using rotten fruit and vegetables, dead flies, waste water and sludge.
Ioannis Ieropoulos, a scientist with the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, explained that the microorganisms work inside microbial fuel cells where they metabolize the organics, converting them into carbon dioxide and electricity.
Like the human heart, the robotic system works by using artificial muscles that compress a soft area in the center of the device, forcing fluid to be expelled through an outlet and delivered to the fuel cells. The artificial muscles then relax and go through the process again for the next cycle.
“The artificial heartbeat is mechanically simpler than a conventional electric motor-driven pump by virtue of the fact that it employs artificial muscle fibers to create the pumping action, rather than an electric motor, which is by comparison a more complex mechanical assembly,” Walter said.