This ball-shaped rotating wing rc-aircraft was designed and built to learn about the flight behavior of constantly horizontally rotating wings.
It flies with a remarkable stability in winds up to 1bft. Flightweight is around 650grs. and it is powerd by a 3D vector control unit, permanently stabilized by a 3S-1050mA LiPo (120 grs.) as a pendulum. The rotating ball is made from 6mm DEPRON and cf-rods.
Circa 2019
The “Forze VIII”, a hydrogen-electric Le Mans style prototype, became the first-ever hydrogen-electric vehicle to beat petrol-powered cars in an official race.
The car, that was designed, built, tested and raced by a group of students from Delft University of Technology, finished second in the Supercar Challenge at the TT Circuit in Assen, the Netherlands.
In a field of 43 petrol-powered race cars, the pink race car started the last race of the weekend from the fourth position. After a strong start, the car climbed quickly from fourth to second in its class. Within a few laps, driver Leo van der Eijk had already built up a 15-second gap between him and the third position. The team was able to keep up the pace for the rest of the race and secured a podium position. “We’re incredibly proud of what we have accomplished today. Never before did a hydrogen-electric race car beat other cars in an official competition – let alone the kind of petrol-powered race cars we were racing against today. This podium finish is the result of not just one year, but twelve years of dedication, faith and hard work. Being a student team makes it feel almost unreal to be the first to ever accomplish this” says Zhi Wei Cai, Team Manager.
The ‘engine’ is actually a nanotube, powered by an enzyme-triggered biocatalytic reaction using urea as fuel. The reaction creates an internal flow that extends out into the fluid, causing an open cavity to form. This results in thrust, propelling the nanotube along.
Samuel Sánchez was one of the lead researchers from the previous record holders where their nanotube jet engine measured 600nm across and weighed 1 femtogram (10^−15 kg).
Xing Ma and Samuel Sánchez recognise both Ana C. Hortelao (Spain) and Albert Miguel-López (Spain) contribution to the research as well as the support from their affiliated institutions:
Danny Key in his Wheel Horse Garden Tractor lined up against Freddie Ringlet (I think) in his Roper Garden Tractor, for what may be the first ever heads up tractor race!! Danny’s tractor is fitted with a Honda cbr1000 engine, out of a 1990’s bike. It has straight through pipes, and bell mouths on the carbs. The timing has also been advanced to enable it to run on VP race fuel. Danny said ‘it is a little down on compression, and he is just waiting on it going bang, before he can start on a rebuild’. The other tractor, I have no info on as yet. (any info appreciated)
Danny won both races with an 12.53 @ 107mph v 14.8 @ 90mph. and an 11.92 @ 108mph v 14.34 @ 92mph.
He has run down into the low 11’s before @ 114mph, but with cold track conditions and being down on power, this was not a bad run. Hope to see him out again next year, running on Renegade Race Fuel and sponsored by Jeff Ludgate.
Note: I have removed the earlier video, as I found this quicker run that I filmed.
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Yamaha reveals a 496-horsepower prototype electric motor. It’s willing and able to develop it for a car company, and do development work on the car itself.
Could be used for next generation electric cars.
The British appliance manufacturer Dyson claims to have developed the world’s fastest, most efficient motor for domestic appliances. The Dyson Digital Motor (DDM) v2 is a single-phase brushless DC motor, which operates at speeds up to 104000 rpm with a claimed efficiency of 84%.
Dyson’s first digital motor, announced in 2003, used switched reluctance technology.
Computer scientists from Rice University have displayed an artificial intelligence (AI) software that can run on commodity processors and train deep neural networks 15 times faster than platforms based on graphics processors.
According to Anshumali Shrivastava, an assistant professor of computer science at Rice’s Brown School of Engineering, the resources spent on training are the actual bottleneck in AI. Companies are spending millions of dollars a week to train and fine-tune their AI workloads.
Deep neural networks (DNN) are a very powerful type of artificial intelligence that can outperform humans at some tasks. DNN training is a series of matrix multiplication operations and an ideal workload for graphics processing units (GPUs), which costs nearly three times more than general-purpose central processing units (CPUs).
Rice University computer scientists have demonstrated artificial intelligence (AI) software that runs on commodity processors and trains deep neural networks 15 times faster than platforms based on graphics processors.
“The cost of training is the actual bottleneck in AI,” said Anshumali Shrivastava, an assistant professor of computer science at Rice’s Brown School of Engineering. “Companies are spending millions of dollars a week just to train and fine-tune their AI workloads.”
Shrivastava and collaborators from Rice and Intel will present research that addresses that bottleneck April 8 at the machine learning systems conference MLSys.
Segway-Ninebot has rather sensationally announced that it’s building a hydrogen fuel cell sportsbike – and boy does this thing look like it glitched its way out of Cyberpunk 2077, complete with a highly improbable steering design and an amazing price.
Here’s what we know so far: Segway has been playing with performance bikes a little bit lately to go with its lineup of cheap electric scooters, mainly sold in China. The Apex was announced in 2019, a slightly gawky looking battery-electric “super scooter” capable of 125 mph (200 km/h), with full sportsbike fairings.
Now, there’s an Apex H2 coming, which will run a hydrogen-electric hybrid powertrain – gaseous hydrogen stored in tanks will be converted into electrical energy through a fuel cell and fed into a buffer battery, which will power an electric motor that drives the rear wheel in some way or another – we can’t see whether there’s a chain drive or a hub motor or what indeed is going on in these renders. Yes, that’s an exhaust port in front of the rear wheel, but all that’ll be coming out of it is water vapor.