BrightSource Energy, a Google.org backed startup we covered a few weeks back, opened their Solar Energy Development Center in Israel this week, and it features an enormous test plant that looks as improbably perfect as a rendering.
The tower in the distance of this picture stands 180 feet tall and is surrounded by 1,600 mirrors that focus the sun’s rays onto the commercial boiler that sits atop the tower. In a real plant that boiler’s steam output would be used to generate electricity with a turbine, but the company didn’t put a turbine in the test facility. BrightSource estimates that a plant this scale could generate 1,500 kilowatts of power.
PG&E, the northern California utility, has agreed to buy 900 megawatt of electricity from the company, and they recently announced a $115 million round of funding.
A host of solar thermal companies are racing to construct pilot plants as a step towards commercializing their various solar concentrating technologies. For more background on the technology and various industry players, check out our previous solar thermal coverage here, here, and here.
There are a couple more awesome pictures after the jump.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) revolutionised the medical world two decades ago, providing doctors with an unparalleled view inside the human body. Now, MRI-MARCB has taken MRI to a new level with a system that enhances image quality, reduces scan time and improves diagnosis. Currently in use in several hospitals around the world, the MRI-MARCB system overcomes one of the principal problems in producing MR images of the brain and heart: movement.
“Though MRI is an excellent non-intrusive imaging modality with excellent soft tissue contrast it is susceptible to motion because it can take several seconds or even minutes to acquire an image,” explains Kay Nehrke at Philips Medical Systems in Germany, coordinator of this IST-programme funded project. “During that time the patient’s heart is beating and they’re breathing – it’s like taking a photo of a moving object. If the photo takes one second the image will appear blurry. If you follow the object with the camera, however, you’ll get a clear image and that is what we’ve done in a sense.”
The project partners used two different but complimentary techniques to overcome the motion problem. In the case of heart scans a software system was developed to create a mathematical model of the pattern of movement caused by breathing and heart beat. That information is then used to compensate for the motion effects in the resulting MR image. For brain scans, where even the slightest movement of a patient’s head could cause images to be unusable, a camera system was employed alongside the software to track and compensate for motion.
“Without compensation images can be filled with artefacts, making it hard to tell whether you are looking at a clogged artery or just a poor image,” Nehrke says.
With the MRI-MARCB system image quality is greatly improved resulting in more precise diagnosis, while at the same time reducing the time it takes to perform an MRI scan.
“Trials at 10 hospitals with around 200 patients showed a 30 per cent reduction in scan time because of the compensation for movement,” Nehrke notes. “As we all know time is money so this offers important cost savings for hospitals, while patients feel more comfortable because they do not have to worry so much about not moving or even breathing.”
According to the project coordinator, the software can be easily integrated into existing MRI platforms, and the camera system is “relatively inexpensive given the advantages it provides.”
MRI-MARCB is currently being used at hospitals in Germany, Denmark, Japan and the United States, with the project partners planning further commercialisation activities and development in the future.
A fully digital 4D ultrasound system is set to provide a ‘next generation’ integrated solution for medical imaging applications, allowing practitioners to provide faster treatment and improve therapeutic success rates. Developed by ADUMS, an IST-funded project that ended in April 2005, the advanced high-quality imaging system will significantly reduce diagnostic time. In addition, the technology uses off-the-shelf computer hardware, making it a much cheaper alternative to expensive, purpose-produced ultrasound machines.
“The whole process of ultrasound devices has been moved away from the traditional hardware and is now implemented in software,” says Dr Georgios Sakas, ADUMS project coordinator. “The hardware of the device creates mechanical waves and receives the echoes. Once the echoes are received, they are converted in digital form and the rest of the processing is performed by software.”
A 4D ultrasound takes multiple images in rapid succession, creating a three-dimensional motion video, which is invaluable for diagnosis purposes.
An important factor in ultrasound image processing is the beamformer, the part of the system that provides the focusing for the ultrasound beam.
Dr Stergios Stergiopoulos, president of the Canadian National Medical Technologies, one of the project partners, maintains that even today’s most advanced state-of- the-art medical ultrasound imaging systems suffer from very poor image resolution.
“This is the result of the very small size of deployed arrays of sensors and the distortion effects by the influence of the human body’s non-linear propagation characteristics,” he says. “The ADUMS project technology replaces the beamformer of the ultrasound systems with the adaptive beamforming scheme that has been developed for the sonar array systems of the Canadian Navy. The ADUMS project results demonstrated that the new adaptive beamformer significantly improves, at very low cost, the image resolution capabilities of the ultrasound imaging systems, which will result in better diagnosis.”
Until now, every new generation of the hardware component of ultrasound devices was, effectively, a complete redesign.
“On the other hand, ADUMS technology is based on a complete software approach, using off-the-shelf PC components,” explains Dr Sakas. “Thus, a redesign from scratch will not be necessary and future improvements can be made by extensions of existing software.”
The portability and the low cost of the 4D ultrasound systems allow medical practitioners and family physicians to have ready access to diagnostic imaging systems on a daily basis and will make a valuable contribution in the field of preventive medicine, adds Dr Stergiopoulos.
Consortium partners are currently using the new technology for their businesses and are promoting it to other organisations that use ultrasound technology.
European researchers developed technology that enables a robot to combine data from both sound and vision to create combined, purposeful perception. In the process, they have taken the field to a new level. Currently, computer vision is good at recognising objects in images and videos and has been successfully employed in several specialised industrial applications, such as quality control during microchip fabrication.
But robotic perception is much weaker in less defined situations, like understanding and responding to human behaviour and even conversations. Yet, it is precisely this sort of interaction which promises the most compelling applications for future humanoid technology, where people-like robots can act as guides, or mix with people, or use perception to infer appropriate actions.
More importantly, these broad robotic applications will deliver insights into other disciplines, like cognition and neuroscience.
A truly perceptive robot, capable of acting independently and appropriately in complex situations remains a distant goal, but European researchers brought it much closer with their Perception-on-Purpose (POP) project.
Original, by design “The originality of our project was our attempt to integrate two different sensory modalities, namely sound and vision,” explains Radu Horaud, POP’s coordinator.
“This was very difficult to do, because you are integrating two completely different physical phenomena,” he adds.
Vision works from the reflection of light waves from an object, and it allows the observer to infer certain properties, like size, shape, density and texture. But with sound you are interested in locating the direction of the source, and trying to identify the type of sound it is.
Tricky issue On its own, sound is difficult to pinpoint, because it needs to be located in a 3D space. Then there is the problem of background noise, such as an open window letting in sounds from next door.
But it turned out that integrating two different senses helped the researchers in their bid to locate and tune into relevant sounds.
“It is not that easy to decide what is foreground and what is background using sound alone, but by combining the two modalities – sound and vision – it becomes much easier,” reveals Horaud.
“If you are able to locate ten sound sources in ten different directions, but if in one of these directions you see a face, then you can much more easily concentrate on that sound and throw out the other ones.”
Integrated technology This was one approach that the team took and, with the algorithms they developed, their robot, called Popeye, was able to identify the speaker with a fair degree of reliability.
“There is more work to be done on that aspect of the work, it is not completely robust yet,” warns Horaud.
Still, it was a very strong result, and what makes it even more impressive is that the team managed to integrate all the technology into a neat and compact robotic platform.
“Most often, sound research is conducted in specialised labs, with arrays of microphones and a very controlled acoustic environment. But we integrated our two microphones and two cameras onto the head of our Popeye. The idea is to have an agent-centred cognitive system,” Horaud stresses.
Powerful technology The Popeye packs a lot of powerful technology into a small space and offers purposeful robotic perception. This is important because Horaud argues persuasively that, in evolutionary terms, multi-sensory perception and cognition are linked.
By perceiving a hand-held object with their two eyes, for example, monkeys – and the first hominids after them – developed stereo vision and hence were able to learn many properties of an object from combined tactile and visual data. Over time, they developed new skills, including building tools, from this information.
Horaud feels, too, that some modern uses of artificial intelligence (AI), like chess applications, are limited because they do not learn from their environment. They are programmed with abstract data – say, chess moves – and they process that.
“They cannot infer predicates from natural images; they cannot draw abstract information from physical observations,” he stresses.
For now, POP has achieved many of its aims and developed very promising approaches. Commercial applications for this type of technology are not out of the question, and the researchers also hope to continue their work in a further project.
That project would look at extending some of POP’s results into a functioning humanoid robot. In the meantime, POP’s work means that the purposefully perceptive robot has become a not-so-distant future technology.
The POP project received funding from the Sixth Framework Programme for research.
Watch America's brightest high school science students achieve breakthroughs, set the groundwork for brilliant careers, and make extremely cool robots. They're part of the FIRST Robotics Competition, in which more than 20,000 high school students from across the country compete to reach new breakthroughs in robotics. The contest gets its name from "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology" (FIRST). Follow three diverse teams in this Science Channel original special. Feel the heat of competition, marvel at the teenagers' ingenuity, and connect with the emotion of the experience.
ROBOT is a unique publication that offers the "how to do it" for the robot enthusiast and robot hobbyist, as well as the "what's going on" in the expanding world of robotics for the interested layperson or technical professional. It offer parents, teachers and kids guidance on using and playing with the new generation of consumer, toy and hobby robot products that serve as educational tools and recreational fun.
Robot features a "Spotlight on Education" section that includes coverage of FIRST Robotics, FIRST LEGO Mindstorm and VEX kits and competitions; this will be important reading for robotics educators and involved students who wish to sharpen their competitive edge.
THE "HOW-TO DO IT"
* Include projects simple enough for the robot enthusiast to jump in and become an entry level robot hobbyist, and projects advanced enough to draw the attention of serious robot hobbyists up to a graduate school level
* Emphasize robot kits that include all the pieces needed--to involve the lay reader who wants an easily accessible, complete robot experience without having to become an engineer
THE "WHAT'S GOING ON"
* Cover a spectrum of compelling, interesting stories and news in robotics of the type that occasionally appear in Wired, Discover, Popular Science, New York Science Times and Design News. This will attract a general readership as well as industry specialists:
* Latest robot toys and how to best use and develop them. * Lego Mindstorm projects and competitions * FIRST competitions (1,000 teams, 24,000+ students) * NASA robots such as the Martian Rovers * Consumer robots (vacuum cleaners, computerized clothing) * Fighting robots as seen on TV programs * Science project robots * Latest advances in artificial intelligence * Industrial and military robots
Make: Technology on Your Time is a hybrid of a magazine and a book. It's a magazine, but not a typical one.
If you like to tweak, disassemble, re-create, and invent cool new uses for technology, you'll love MAKE the new quarterly publication for the inquisitive do-it-yourselfer. Every issue is packed with projects to help you make the most of all the technology in your life. Everything from home entertainment systems, to laptops, to robots is fair game. If there's a way to hack it, tweak it, bend it, or remix it, you will find out about it in MAKE.
This isn't another gadget magazine. MAKE focuses on cool things you can do to make technology work the way you want it to. The publication is inspired by the bestselling Hacks series of books but with a twist.
Whether you're a geek or hacker who delights in creating new uses for technology, or a Saturday afternoon tinkerer who loves to get his hands dirty, you'll keep every issue of MAKE on your bookshelf for years to come. Each issue includes 224 pages packed with tips and tricks, including:
* How to turn a VCR into a pet feeding robot * How to make a see-through potato cannon * Extreme bot builders at home * How to decipher the magnetic stripe on your credit card to find out what your credit card company really knows about you * How to build a light-seeking robot from an old mouse
Every quarter, MAKE features a unique set of innovative ideas and creations for a variety of new technologies, including mobile devices, in-car computers, web services, digital media, wireless and home networking, and computer hardware.
The magazine has a homemade yet professional feel. The photos give the impression they're taken by average people and not photographers, but they're good quality and complement the articles. Even if you don't have time to create things, you will find it an engrossing read thanks to the personable writing and easy to follow instructions.
Built for the do-it-yourselfer, Dremel's cordless MultiPro kit delivers the versatility you expect from a Dremel--with the added advantage of being cordless. Lightweight at only 9 ounces, this compact unit maneuvers comfortably in tight spaces.
What will you use it for? Remove old grout in your bathtub, polish your flatware, remove a broken tile, etch glass, hang miniblinds, cut out a pet door, install a new car stereo, sand off a spot of hard-to-reach rust, clean your boat's outboard engine parts, refinish ornate woodwork, install a mortise lock, and much, much more.
The kit comes with 50 bits, including a high-speed cutter, a bristle brush, a cutoff wheel, sanding discs, a felt polishing wheel, a grinding wheel, and more--all the tools you need to tackle projects around the home. The tool's ball-bearing shaft affords minimal vibration. The shaft-lock button and unique knurled collet nut make changing bits easy - with no wrench required.
This lightweight, compact unit features speeds of 7,500 or 15,000 RPM. A battery charger and a carrying case are included. You'll want to keep it charged up and handy at all times.
Every robotics laboratory needs a good set of basic tools. Check our selection below and see if there is an essential gadget that will simplify your work and make your hobby more fun.
Designed with the hobbyist and the do-it-yourself enthusiast in mind, this kit features a high-quality, lightweight pencil iron with variable power control, a cushioned foam grip with a replaceable heating element, and a safety guard iron holder. And it's from Weller, the world leader in soldering since 1945.
At the heart of the WLC100 Soldering Station is a high-quality lightweight pencil iron with an iron-plated copper tip. The tip is constructed of solid copper and plated with iron, as well as nickel and chromium to protect against corrosion and solder creep. The iron has a cushioned foam grip that sits comfortably in your hand as you work.
The WLC100 features a variable power control that lets you adjust the power level from five to 40 watts with a simple turn of the knob on the base unit. The base also includes a "power-on" indicator light and on/off switch to help keep you from leaving a hot iron on accidentally.
This soldering station is UL-listed, which means it has been tested and meets independent safety standards. It is backed by a one year warranty against manufacturer's defects in material and workmanship.
Every roboticist needs a good set of basic tools, and kits are a great way to get them at a considerable savings. Three things make Denali's kit stand out - the price, an exceptional selection of quality tools, and the custom heavy-duty nylon bag. It's hard to find a set of tools as extensive as this for anywhere near this price. If purchased separately, these items might cost $150.
The Denali tool kit is about the size of a breadbox and it has both a shoulder strap and hand-straps that Velcro together, making it easy to carry around. The mouth of the bag has metal stabilizing rods in the zipper, so it opens wide and stays open. There are several pockets lining the inside and outside of the bag to carry things like nails, screws, tape, etc. This is a well-appointed set of quality tools that should outfit you for just about any household need.
What's In The Bag: * 16-ounce ripping hammer with heavy duty fiberglass handle * 9-inch, aluminum torpedo level * 3/4-inch wide by 16-foot long tape measure * Heavy-duty zinc utility knife with rubber grip
Wrenches: * 16pc hex key set (Allen wrenches). eight metric and eight English sizes. * 6-piece combination wrench set with steel clip
Pliers: * 8-inch needle- nose pliers with wire-cutting blades (meets or exceeds ANSI standards) * 8-inch diagonal pliers (meets or exceeds ANSI standards) * 8-inch groove-joint pliers (meets or exceeds ANSI standards) * 7-inch nickel-coated locking pliers * wire cutters
Screwdrivers: Denali's kit includes a ratcheting handle with a selection of interchangeable bits to provide an exceptional array of screwdrivers in all sizes and head shapes. * 14 flat head: 4, 5, 6, and 7 mm and 3/32-, 1/8-, 5/32-, 3/16- (x3), 7/32-, and 1/4- (x3) inch * 9 Phillips head: 1x2, 2x5, and 3x2 * 3 square head: S1, S2, and S3 * 10 star head: T6, T7, T8, T10, T15, T20, T25, T27, T30, and T40 * 10 hex: 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 mm and 1/8-, 5/32-, 3/16-, 7/32-, and 1/4-inch * 4 Pozidriv: PZ0, PZ1, PZ2, and PZ3 * 14 nut drivers
Drill Bits: * 13-piece titanium-coated high-speed steel with steel case: 1/4-, 15/64-, 7/32-, 13/64-, 3/16-, 11/64-, 5/32-, 9/64-, 1/8-. 7/64-, 3/32-, 5/64-, and 1/16-inch * 50-piece chrome vanadium steel 1-inch screwdriver bit set can be used with either a cordless drill or the ratcheting screwdriver * 5-piece masonry bit set with steel case: 5/32 to 3/8-inch
Modify your robots or make your own from scratch with these high-quality motors and raw materials. Online metals is a great place to get the raw materials for your robot because they specialize in sales of small quantities. They stock aluminum and steel in every size and shape you might need. Titanium and tool steel are also available for the high-performance builder, and so is polycarbonate (Lexan). They also have a great selection of 4130 Chromoly tubing, and convenient "Metal Pack" assortments.
