Hasta La Gadget!

One of the biggest challenges in rolling out a electric vehicle charging system in cities around the world is where to place the chargers and how to wire them into the electric grid. Some interesting wireless electric charging devices are expected to land in New York City in early 2014 from a company called Hevo Power. The coolest part about these wireless charging systems isn’t the fact that they don’t need wires, but rather that they hide in plain sight looking like manhole covers.

Hevo CEO and Founder Jeremy McCool says that the idea to hide his wireless EV charges as manhole covers came to him while walking down the streets of NYC. He said:

I was walking down the street, pondering how wireless charging could be deployed. I was standing at 116th and Broadway, and I was looking down and saw a manhole cover. And thought, that’s the ticket. There are no cords, no hazards. Everything can be underneath the manhole cover.

That realization is where the idea of the company’s wireless charging systems came from. Hevo plans to roll out the charging systems in Washington Square Park in early 2014. The initial wireless chargers will be usable by a pair of Smart ForTwo EVs operated by NYU. The wireless charging technology from Hevo uses resonance charging rather than inductive charging used by other EV charging systems.

Hevo Power says that inductive charging is inefficient, but it’s resonance system uses coils in the vehicle and the charging plate connected with capacitors that resonate a specific frequency. That resonance technology minimizes energy losses, and allows energy to transfer at a faster rate and across a wider gap. The Hevo wireless charging system has three components including the power station that can be bolted to the street or embedded in the pavement. The receiver has to be connected to the EV battery system and a smartphone app is used to help drivers line the vehicle up on the charger to start charging.

Hevo’s current system is classified as a Level 2 charging station providing 220 V and up to 10 kW of energy. The system can produce more than 10 kW of energy depending on the application. Hevo is talking with major companies that operate large vehicle fleets including Pepsi, Walgreens, and City Harvest to potentially use the system for larger fleets of electric vehicles.

[via Wired]

It wasn’t all that long ago that GPS technology was a rare commodity. These days, nearly every handheld device has GPS-powered navigation and tracking technology built into it. But now global positioning systems have the potential to impact our lives in ways we couldn’t have dreamed of 10 years ago. The data provided by today’s GPS satellites can pinpoint the location of people and objects down to just a few meters.

This information can be used to power numerous improvements to our lives and safety. Here are a few examples of how accurate GPS coordinate data can be used to make the world a better place. GPS technology can be used to help do everything from improve delivery service, to preventing loss of property, to keeping our skies, roadways, families and pets safe.

One area in which GPS technology is making everyday life more convenient is in the area of delivery services. The technology can be used to not only ensure that drivers are following the most efficient route to their destination, but also can now be used to provide real-time data on the location of deliveries to both companies and their customers. One such example is the GrubHub food delivery service.

This local food delivery aggregator allows participating restaurants to share location data for delivery orders via an Android or iPhone app, so consumers can know exactly where their food is and when it will arrive at its destination. No more wondering if or when your meal will show up – all thanks to GPS tech.

Of course, global positioning data isn’t just for things like finding out where your pizza is. GPS data is frequently used by emergency responders to quickly find their way to victims of disasters, crimes, and accidents. Today’s Enhanced 911 emergency response systems are backed by GPS data.

These public safety systems leverage GPS and cell phone tower location data to try and instantaneously locate the caller, speeding response and ensuring accurate response location. Can you imagine being in an emergency situation where you can’t speak, or don’t have the time or focus to be able to report your location? Thankfully, GPS tech has got you covered.

Location coordinate data can also be used to track down lost personal property, but even more importantly can help find lost pets and children. One such application of this technology is the FiLIP, a forthcoming device that combines an emergency phone and GPS-based locator for children in a special wristwatch.

This gadget looks like an oversize watch, but it allows parents and guardians to not only track the location of their kids, but to be alerted if they leave a pre-set “safe zone” – such as school or a park. You can also call or message your child. The watch can even dial a tree of emergency contacts and record ambient sounds when its emergency button is pushed. Having this always-on connectivity to your child certainly can ease parent’s minds, and can definitely help save children from precarious situations. But it’s having accurate location data that’s the most critical component of such devices.

These are but a few innovations which depend on GPS location data, and the future remains bright for the application of global positioning technology. You can be a part of it by contributing your own ideas over at The Air Force Collaboratory in their “Launch of GPS IIF” project. This project will help the Air Force launch its own GPS satellite into the GPS Constellation, and is just one of three recently-launched projects which encourage the general public to participate in the conceptualization development of new technologies which can improve Air Force safety and efficiency, and contribute to the general safety and security of humankind.

Thank you The Air Force Collaboratory and Technorati for being sponsors of this article. All opinions expressed here are my own and the products mentioned are not endorsed by the U.S. Air Force.

Yesterday Valve released a video showing a prototype of the Steam Controller – which is designed to be used with the company’s upcoming Steam Machines – being used to play a handful of games. The demo focused on the controller’s “legacy mode”, in which the controller emulates a mouse and a keyboard, letting you map keys and cursor movement to the controller’s buttons, triggers and trackpads.

In the demo, the controller was used to play four mouse-heavy games: Portal, Civilization V, Counter-Strike: G.O. and Papers, Please. The games were chosen to show the accuracy of the trackpads, as well as how well it works with menu-heavy games that were meant to be used with a keyboard and mouse.

As was mentioned in the demo, Valve will release more demos featuring a variety of games. Even if you’ve already decided that the controller isn’t for you, remember that Steam Machines will still support mouse and keyboard combos. In any case I think that the Steam Controller is mainly for console gamers, to get them to try the PC games on Steam. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if Valve is working on or supporting the development of games that were made with the Steam Controller in mind.

[via Rock Paper Shotgun]

When you think of Disney, most typically think of animated movies and theme parks, but Disney also has a research arm that looks into all sorts of future technology. Researchers at Disney have created an interesting and very cheap power generator that uses pieces of paper. This won’t create enough power to run your computer, but it does generate enough electricity to make LEDs glow, make sounds, or turn on an e-book display.

The generator uses sheets of conductive Teflon to create an electrical charge as users rub, touch or tap its surfaces together. Circuits are then able to take advantage of that electric charge and harness it to create power for small electronic devices.

The researchers say the generators are extremely cheap and convenient to produce. Such generators could to add interactivity to just about anything you can think of. Disney sees the potential for such generators to be used to power interactivity in books, papers, magazines, posters, and a number of other places.

Researcher Ivan Poupyrev said, “This simplicity leads to countless applications enabling interactivity everywhere and anytime. My overall goal is to make the whole world interactive, and creating ubiquitous power supplies is a key step in that direction.”

[via French Tribune]

The geniuses at Disney Research are obsessed with touch-based input. One of their latest breakthroughs is an algorithm that can “simulate rich 3D geometric features (such as bumps, ridges, edges, protrusions, texture etc.) on touch screen surfaces.” In other words, it provides the feeling of touching a 3D object even though the user is only touching a flat surface. Someday we’ll know what an Angry Bird feels like.

To prove that their algorithm works, Seung-Chan Kim, Ali Israr and Ivan Poupyrev of Disney Research Pittsburgh used an “electro-vibration based friction display.” The display emits a voltage that simulates the friction that our hands would feel if we were actually touching the object shown in the image or video. The researchers say that they can get depth maps from 3D models or from a depth sensor such as Kinect.

Combine this with the Oculus Rift and adult films – er videogames will attain a higher level of realism.

[via Disney Research via Reddit]