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Category: transportation – Page 370

Over the past decade or so, researchers have been trying to develop techniques that could enable effective collaborative strategies among teams of robots. One of the tasks that teams of robots could complete better than individual robots is simultaneously searching for several targets or objects in their surrounding environment.

The ability of a team of robots to collectively seek and identify numerous targets at once could be useful for a wide range of applications. For instance, it could aid surveillance applications and help to better track individuals or vehicles.

Researchers at Tongji University and University of Stuttgart have recently devised a systematic framework for enabling more effective multiple target search in swarm robots. This framework, presented in a paper published in IEEE Access, is based on the use of a mechanical particle swarm optimization method and artificial potential fields.

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The Zhejiang Geely Holding Group recently unveiled the prototype design of the Terrafugia TF-2A eVTOL aircraft, and announced that they have already begun flight tests as well. The newer design is a clear upgrade over the previous demonstrator that was revealed in December 2019.

Based on the aesthetics of a tiger shark, the TF-2A features a large upper wing, H-shaped tail, eight lift propellers for vertical takeoff or landing (VTOL) as well as one rear propeller for horizontal flight. According to Geely, the design should make certification easier to obtain as opposed to the more common tilt-rotor designs in the industry. For example, the New Hampshire Senate recently motioned to pass a number of bills, one of which pertained to the topic of aerial mobility. HB-1517, “An Act Relative to Roadable Aircraft,” adds the words “roadable aircraft” to existing laws for vehicles concerning things like inspections and crashes, requiring the roadable aircraft to be “required to take off and land from a suitable airstrip and shall be prohibited from taking off and landing from any public roadway, unless under conditions of an emergency”. Currently, only Terrafugia’s TF-2A and PAL-V’s eVTOL meet these standards.

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Chesky predicted that vacationers will stay closer to home in the future, largely limiting their travel to places within driving distance, with national parks becoming even more popular destinations.

“I think you’re going to start to see travel becoming more intimate, more local, to smaller communities,” he said, citing Airbnb data that shows travel within countries is recovering to normal levels. But its international business is still being hit hard. “People are not getting on airplanes, they’re not crossing borders, they’re not meaningfully traveling to cities, they’re not traveling for business.”

Read: Is it safer to stay at a hotel or an Airbnb during your summer vacation? ‘We need to balance sanity and risk’

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Undeterred by decades of failure, the U.S. Army is trying again to acquire a new scout helicopter. The new rotorcraft is supposed to restore the dedicated aerial scout mission the Army gave up when in 2017 it retired its roughly 300 Bell OH-58D Kiowa Warrior copters.

And here’s a surprise. The new Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft also will replace half of the ground-combat branch’s 700 Boeing AH-64 Apache attack helicopters.

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Hydrogen’s impressive energy density offers some compelling advantages that could see it make a huge difference in the electric aviation and eVTOL sectors, as well as in renewable energy, where it’s a lightweight and transportable, if not particularly efficient, way to store clean energy that’s not necessarily generated where or when you need it. It’s also being pushed as a means of exporting green energy, and Japan and Korea in particular are investing heavily in the idea of a hydrogen energy economy powering everything from vehicles to homes and industry.

For this to come about in a globally positive way, it’s imperative that clean, green hydrogen production becomes cheaper, because right now, the easiest and cheapest ways to get yourself a tank full of hydrogen are things like steam reforming, which produces up to 12 times as much carbon dioxide as it does hydrogen by weight.

Green, renewable production methods are thus hot topics for researchers and industry, and a new breakthrough from scientists at the Australian National University (ANU) could make a significant contribution.

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