Laptop-DRV » R&D and Inventions

Bike Purifies Water with Pedal-Power

admin — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 02:02:21 +0000

The CycloClean from Nippon Basic

CycloClean is a Japanese designed bike that purifies water with pedal-power. Aimed at a developing universe, a bike can suck up, dumpy purify as well as then store water from flattering most any source. Then all you need to do is ride home.

It functions like this. You park up subsequent to a muddy stream or dubious seeking lake. Lower a hose into the h2o, hitch a bike up on the stand, and stand back on. The back circle is kept off the ground, and the pedals now energy a siphon. Water is forced by a first filter prior to moving on to an activated carbon filter, similar to the one you may have in a Brita jug during home. Finally, the water passes through the “micro-filtration membrane filter” before being stored in a vessel of your preference.

The CycloClean can routine three tons of h2o in ten hours (you might wish to take turns roving it). That’s enough to supply 1,500 people for one day. some smaller figure may be easier to understand: you’ll get 5 liter (1.3 gallons) in the notation. Filters should final for up to two years.

The bikes have already been deployed by a maker, Nippon Basic, from Kawasaki, outward Tokyo. They cost ¥550,000 each. That’s around $6,650. As you can see, they’re not starting to be offered to residents, though the association has shifted 200 of them in 5 years. The bikes themselves have been made to last, with non-puncture tires as well as redundancies so that you can still make use of the bike for travel or pumping when the filters have lapsed, for e.g., and one great make use of for this stout beast is on a ground at disaster sites.

I love it (except the cost. Not just since it will save lives as well as infer the money-spinner for some intelligent developing universe entrepreneur, though since it yet again shows how awesomely flexible bikes have been.

CycloClean product page [Nippon Basic around Physorg. Thanks, Chuck!]

Lever-Powered, Off-Road Wheelchair for Developing World

admin — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 02:01:52 +0000

Amos Winter’s LFC, or Leveraged Freedom Chair, is the wheelchair for the building world. It’s written for off-road use as well as for speeding along a odd good, prosaic highway, and since it is built from bicycle tools, it can be repaired anywhere that bikes can be remade, that is pretty most a entire world. In actuality, the simple pattern equates to which it can essentially be done by anyone with a couple of gangling tools and some fusing or melting rigging.

First, it’s prolonged, and therefore stable on hills and other rough-terrain. And since not even a strong, able-bodied person would want to pull themselves and a heavy steel chair up a bumpy slant, it has “gears”. Those dual prolonged levers are what drives a chairs, via bike chains and freewheels (both sides have been eccentric, to allow steering). Grab low down the levers and you can get up a little speed. When the starting gets harder, you grab a tops of the levers as well as make use of the automatic value they provide to change down and power up hills.

The LFC has undergone tests, and is starting a pre-production clinical trial right now in India. Hopefully which will go well, but this story really shows the significance of information exchange in the developing universe. If you show a print of this chair to anyone with the seminar, anywhere in the universe, as well as they would be means to start building it right away.

The Leveraged Freedom Chair [MIT Media Lab via Core77]

Shot-Counter Brings Video-Game Guns to Real Life

admin — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 12:27:15 +0000

Ah-ah. I know what you’re meditative: ‘Did he fire six shots, or only five?’ Well, to discuss it you the truth, in all this fad I kind of lost track myself. But, being as this is the .44 Magnum, a most powerful handgun in the universe, as well as would blow your conduct clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself a single subject: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, PUNK?

You know what? Dirty Harry competence have been unwashed, though he wasn’t stupid. Even the child can count up to six. Harry knew how many shots he had dismissed.

But what of today’s shootists, their brain-finger connections honed by video-games, though during a same time their memories are malleable by always-on report. Could the average American adult keep lane of his ammo? With Michael Ciuffo’s shot-counter, he won’t have to. Watch this video, as well as try to recollect which it is real-life, not a first-person-shooter. The slo-mo starts only after a minute in.

The counter uses an accelerometer to magnitude the boomerang increase in speed during any shot, as well as a brain is an ATTiny 2313 micro controller running on a span of AAA batteries. The attraction can be practiced from 0G to 50G, as well as there is program trickery to stop delegate vibrations from being rescued.

Cranking down the sensitivity means which bumps and whacks won’t means fake readings. Michael says which in order to dope a sensor “You would need to smack it tough enough to furnish 22.5gs of increase in speed directly on the nozzle of the gun.” He additionally says it should be quick enough to keep up with any arms which “fires fewer than 900 rounds per minute.”

Such is a greeting to the videos upon his YouTube channel which Michael plans to put up a site and begin selling these things, possibly total or in pack form. Real-life Gears of War, here we come.

Bullet Counter official test [Michael Ciuffo / YouTube around Kotaku]

Ejector Plug Makes British Sockets Pensioner-Friendly

admin — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 15:53:26 +0000

This curious plug-ejecting power-socket has only won initial prize in a The Future Perfect Company pattern foe. The brief: Come up with “attractive and aspirational” designs that assistance people lift on as normal when they get comparison.

For many of the world, pulling out a block is as elementary as yanking the connective tissue. Arthritis? Wrap a cord around your wrist before you pull. In England – where a fear of execution is only matched by the fright of the gangs of teenagers which roam a streets like marauding post-apocalyptic biker-gangs (only without the bikes) – things have been some-more formidable. Switches, interlocks as well as a three-pronged design with the side-exiting cable meant you need a little clever fingers to unplug the plug.

Glenn Crombie’s winning pattern has an eject symbol. Press it and three prongs push a block out as well as let it dump gently to the thick carpets which cover a floors of Britain. Never mind which thin fingers will have to press hard on a thin rod to make it work, or that when the plug is not in place there are three prongs adhering out to locate on skirts, slacks or any furniture you may wish to place in front of the sockets.

I guess the most appropriate thing to do would be to shift UK plugs, but that’s about as expected as a country ditching the bruise for a Euro, moving on a right or eventually admitting that it is no longer in assign of a world-spanning sovereignty.

Innovative push-out plug socket wins student design foe [The Future Perfect Company around Core77]

Robots Evolve More Natural Ways of Walking

admin — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 18:52:23 +0000

Robots which look like oversized hockey pucks, dune buggies or refrigerators might be practical for cleaning floors, exploring Mars or dispensing beer, but it’s the on foot robots which constraint the aptitude.

The trick is making them make use of their legs to walk efficiently, not similar to stiff-legged metal monsters out of the 1950s B movie.

A new mechanism simulation by a Vermont researcher shows how robots competence learn to walk improved by starting on their bellies, a same way animals developed.

For the make-believe, Josh Bongard combined practical robots which could change their shapes over time.

The robots started with snakelike bodies. His make-believe practical dissimilar movement algorithms to the robots’ segmented spines. If the algorithms were successful at relocating a robots closer to a aim, they’d be used in the next iteration. If not, they’d be thrown away.

In any iteration, successful algorithms would be tested alongside somewhat modified versions. After many iterations, the robots had evolved effective transformation patterns and were able to slither rapidly towards the goal.

Then Bongard added legs.

As the legs solemnly grew, the make-believe evolved from slithering to on foot. What’s some-more, it schooled how to travel most more fast than simulations which had legs from a very start.

“You can think of a becoming different bodies of these robots as training wheels,” says Bongard, who teaches an evolutionary robotics march during University of Vermont, where he is an assistant highbrow. The slowly-growing legs allowed the algorithms, or “controllers” in robotics parlance, to trade with a single complaint during the time: initial wiggling, then balance.

The result is the much more healthy speed, too.

“The on foot controllers have been a little dissimilar than what we’ve seen prior to,” says Bongard. “The quadruped uses the spine a lot more, to arrange of chuck the legs brazen. That’s most some-more natural, the way which four-legged animals like dogs walk.”

It’s formidable to make robots change their bodies or grow legs in the earthy universe, but Bongard built the proof of notion regulating Lego Mindstorms.

This robot (shown on top of has the elementary jointed spinal column and 4 legs. At first, an added prop keeps the legs splayed out to a sides, similar to a lizard’s, afterwards progressively pulls them together, in the future permitting a robot to mount up on the legs.

The prototype shows that a identical evolutionary routine could be used to develop effective on foot gaits in real robots, Bongard says.

Photo credit: Josh Bongard

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German Researchers Build Terminator Robot Hand

admin — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 16:58:32 +0000

Warning: Do not watch this video if you lay awake during night, kept from sleep by the terrifying believe which a single day shortly a human race will be thrown into labour by The Machines. For the some-more naïve amongst us, here’s a clip:

Oh, I forgot to say that if you don’t like to see a finger being locked in the clamp and afterwards whacked with the metal bar, you substantially shouldn’t watch, either. Sorry.

The robot palm you see is German done, by researchers at a Institute of Robotics as well as Mechatronics. In building the first part of a Terminator, a researchers were starting for robustness, and they crop up to have achieved quite chilling success.

Not which utility has been traded for toughness: as the video shows, the hand is able of an startling operation of movement. The fingers have been controlled by 38 tendons, any of that is driven by the own motor inside a forearm. Two tendons serve any joint. When their motors spin a same approach, the corner moves. When they spin in opposite directions, a corner stiffens. This lets it toughen-up to locate balls, nonetheless be loose enough to perform delicate operations.

During tests, the researchers went all Joe Pesci upon their drudge origination, and took a baseball bat to a arm – a 66G whack. The outcome? Nothing. The hand came away unscathed.

Not only can a hand take penalty, it can additionally deal it out, exerting up to 30 Newtons of pressure with the fingers, copiousness for either the sensitive massage or a lethal choking grip. It is additionally fast. The joints can turn during 500-degrees per second. If it tenses a springs assimilated to the tendons initial, and afterwards releases that appetite, the joints can reach the head-spinning 2000-degrees per second, or 333 RPM. That’s quick sufficient for it to snap its fingers and serve the tellurian worker to do the behest.

It doesn’t stop there. The conduct of the hand team, Markus Grebenstein (don’t you just wish it was Grabenstein?), says that the plan is to setup the torso with dual arms. His excuse? According to an talk with IEEE Spectrum, Grebenstein says which “The complaint is, you can’t sense but experimenting.”

Yes you can, Mr. Grebenstein. Just watch Terminator 2.

Building the Super Robust Robot Hand [IEEE Spectrum]

Safety Fail: Cardboard Box with Built-In Box-Cutter

admin — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 11:55:22 +0000

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A packing box with a built-in box-cutter. What could presumably go wrong?

What about being refused thoroughfare aboard just about anything? Or a fact that you’re sending a dangerous weapon by a mail? Or the environmental issues of adding a shard of steel to each as well as each box, ready to be tossed away by recipients with as well as but their own box-cutter? I could go upon.

In fact, I will.

What about the hole in the top of the box that lets you grab as well as slice out a tool, though additionally lets packing peanuts out and dirt as well as as well as h2o in? Or a actuality which the couple of routing bashes in normal transit will – inevitably – cause the naked blade to peek out of the cardboard nest and cut off a postman’s finger?

I receive some-more than my fair share of parcels in the mail in a course of my overwhelming pursuit, as well as I make use of the apparatus that God meant us to use for opening up taped-shut cardboard boxes: the biggest, sharpest pass on my keychain.

Look Before You Leap, Think Before You Design! [Yanko]

New Rule Helps Visually Impaired to Measure Up

admin — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 03:26:37 +0000

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People with poor steer can’t use rulers. Or rather they can’t use them simply. Try adding a magnifying potion to the brew when you’re already trying to change the pencil and the ruler in a wily indentation while attempting some DIY as well as you’ll see what I meant.

Product Tank’s New Rule fixes this, as well as it does it without resorting to electronics whose batteries die when you need them most, as well as whose LCD screens have been low-contrast as well as not so easy to see. So how does it work?

The New Rule combines ruler and calipers. Use it as the ruler to pull true edges as well as review of distances on its high-contrast, large-type scale. Then comes a crafty part: the top edge of the ruler flips behind to leave a caliper-jaws unprotected. Move these and dual things occur: the gears click every millimeter, giving audio feedback of stretch, and those same gears additionally spin a dial, which reads out the distance measured.

This has a useful side outcome. The designer describes it in use:

I have found whilst regulating it which it is much some-more fit than the ruler as I have the choice of converting it into the caliper, taking the measurement, then flicking it back into a ruler as well as sketch a line upon paper with a pointer in the same place, allowing for a smoother, quicker work upsurge.

This design is so good thought out that it is obviously not only utilitarian for a visually impaired. I find reading rulers the genuine pain, and anything that can prove both easier to make use of as well as also look this great deserves the place in my toolbox. As it is, a New Rule exists usually as the antecedent.

New Rule [Product Tank via Core77]

3D Printing, Now in Titanium

admin — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 15:51:41 +0000

3D printing used to meant intricately-shaped chunks of cosmetic or creosote, though the range of materials accessible to churn out one-off designs has grown, by potion and stainless steel to – now – titanium.

The service only comes from I.Materialize right right away as well as is done using the process called Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS). The appurtenance lays down the covering of titanium powder as well as a high-powered laser sinters it into the plain later. Sintering is a process of branch powder into plain using feverishness, though but liquefaction.

This is steady covering after layer until the intent is ready, only similar to a 2 x 2-cm round you see above, looking similar to something between a golfball and a microphone you might see in front of a sadness thespian.

Pricing depends upon distance, as well as a volume of titanium used. A 2 x 2 x 4-cm part, regulating a single cubic centimeter of titanium, would cost you €93, or $125. Make something the same size, but with 4 cubic centimeters of titanium and a price goes up to only €144, or $194.

This is pretty cool, and I’m saving up to build my first titanium terminator (my previous prototype was fashioned from tellurian bones as well as old printer-motors, which draws worried questions when I test it outside). You, mortal, can glance over the I.Materialize blog, where you can find pictures of what everyone else will be creation: sentimental trinkets.

i.materialise launches DMLS: You can right away 3d imitation in Titanium [I.Materialize. Thanks, Joris!]

Pole-Less Tent Swaps Sticks for Inflatable Tubes

admin — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 23:44:25 +0000

Heimplanet’s no-pole tent is upon the fork of release, and this video makes a stickless tent look very tantalizing indeed.

The tent, called a Cave, replaces poles with air-filled tubes. These have been organised in a pattern of pentagons as well as triangles and form an exoskeleton from which a tent’s bombard can hang. Once pumped up, these tubes turn rigid as well as also sign themselves off into separate sections, limiting damage if one blood vessel should undergo a puncture. The dome is large sufficient to sleep three, or seat 6.

But, as Core77 writer Hipstomp points out, any weight saved by leaving out a poles will be equivalent by the need to lift the pump. Worse, lightweight poles have been easy to reserve, receiving up roughly no space when strapped to a backpack. And this assumes which the double-walled tubes as well as a concomitant tent-sheets will be less bulky as well as lighter than a regular tent to proceed with.

So distant, there are no details upon price, and the product site only says which a Cave is “coming Feb 2011.” That should be when we find out how most this thing weighs, as well as just how big it is when packed divided.

Cave product page [Hipstomp via Core77]