Hasta La Gadget!

MIT’s electric vehicle prototype may be a long way off from being completed, but if we let that stop us from discussing EVs, we might never talk about them. The headline ambition of this project is a full recharge within 10 minutes, which would eliminate somewhere between four and ten hours of waiting. Speedwise, the Electric Vehicle Team is aiming for a 100 mph top speed from a 250-horsepower / 187 kilowatt AC induction motor, and a not unheard of 200-mile cruising range. To achieve their rapid juicing aim, the students will strap 7,905 lithium iron-phosphate cell batteries from A123Systems to a gutted 2010 Mercury Milan Hybrid body. The batteries’ low internal resistance is what makes things possible, but further hurdles, such as finding a sufficiently powerful energy source, would have to be overcome before any sort of widespread use may occur. Video after the break.

[Via PC World]

Continue reading Video: MIT working on rapid recharging for electric vehicles

Filed under: Transportation

Video: MIT working on rapid recharging for electric vehicles originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Jul 2009 07:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MIT researchers are tracking trash to encourage consumers to recycle by illustrating the amount of energy required to dispose of waste.

For the Trash Track program, the MIT research team is planting special tags on different types of waste to track their journey through disposal systems in New York and Seattle. The tags are wireless monitors, which report the location of each piece of garbage to a central server. This way, the public will be able to view each piece of garbage on a visual map in real time.

“When you have paper in your hand and you throw it away, you lose the connection because that doesn’t belong to you,” explained Musstanser Tinauli, a research assistant at MIT Senseable City lab, in a phone interview with Wired.com. “But our tags make this invisible connection between the people and their trash because it keeps sending the message that it’s still alive. We do see there’s going to be a very strong behavioral impact.”

Over the weekend, the Trash Track team began deploying tagged trash throughout Seattle. When the project concludes, a group of end-of-cycle experts will analyze the environmental impact of each type of waste based on the distance it traveled and the amount of carbon dioxide emitted, according to Tinauli.

Trash Track’s tracking map will be available soon at MIT’s Trash Blog. See a photo of the tracking tag below the jump.

Via MIT news

See Also:

• RFID: To Tag or Not to Tag
• New York Offers Drivers License with RFID Tag
• Farmers See ‘Mark of the Beast’ in RFID Livestock Tags

Photos courtesy of MIT

Researchers at MIT have developed an ultra-broadband radio chip that’s faster than any existing RF spectrum analyzer, while consuming 100 times less power. The RF Cochlea mimics the neural signal processing of the human cochlea, which uses fluid mechanics, piezoelectrics and neural signal processing to convert sound waves into electrical signals which travel to the brain. “The more I started to look at the ear,” said Rahul Sarpeshkar, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, “the more I realized it’s like a super radio with 3,500 parallel channels.” The team has recently filed for a patent to incorporate the chip in a universal or software radio architecture that will process a broad spectrum of signals including cellular phone, wireless Internet, FM, and other signals. Ultimately, this tech could be used to build a universal radio that could receive a broad range of frequencies. Meet Professor Sarpeshkar in the video after the break.

[Via Daily Tech]

Continue reading MIT scientists reverse engineer the ear for ultra-broadband, low power RF chip

Filed under: Science

MIT scientists reverse engineer the ear for ultra-broadband, low power RF chip originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Jun 2009 16:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Pardon the alliteration, but we’re excited about the proposition here. For years — millenniums, even — scientists have been trying to figure out how to manipulate minuscule devices with magnets, and at long last, we’ve got a breakthrough in the field. Metin Sitti, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, is credited with creating a new control technique that could allow microscopic machines to “one day deliver drugs directly to a sickly cell or a tumor.” Essentially, the diminutive bots glide across a glass surface covered with a grid of metal electrodes, and you’re just a click away (it’s the Read link, just so you know) from seeing a live demonstration on how they can be used to “anchor one or more microbots while allowing others to continue to move freely around the surface.” Good times.

Filed under: Robots

CMU researchers control microbots with mini magnets originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 May 2009 18:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve seen some wild ideas when it comes to blood pressure — including, yes, underpants — but this newest device, a small monitor attached to the hand, which can be worn 24 hours a day for continuous monitoring, strikes us as having the potential for extreme usefulness. The monitor works differently than regular old blood pressure cuff, using a method called pulse wave velocity, which measures the pulse at two points along an artery. Built by a team of engineers at MIT, this prototype could boast a lot of advantages over monitors, including its portability, its ability to see long-term patterns of rises and falls in pressure, and of course — you wouldn’t have to be at the doctor’s office to use it — which is bound to take a little stress out of the equation. The device is moving toward commercial production and Harry Asada, leader of the MIT team, sees the possibility for monitoring conditions such as sleep apnea in the future as well.

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Wearable blood pressure monitor: portable and fashionable originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 10 Apr 2009 14:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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