Scientists demonstrate a robotic muscle 1,000 times more powerful than a human's

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Scientists have demonstrated a new type of robotic muscle with 1,000 times more power than human muscle
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If a so-called "rise of the machines" ever comes to fruition, our chances of survival may have just taken a big hit. A team of scientists from the US Department of Energy ’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has demonstrated a new type of robotic muscle with 1,000 times more power than that of a human's, and the ability to catapult an item 50 times its own weight.
The artificial muscle was constructed using the material vanadium dioxide, known for its ability to rapidly change size and shape. The team, working with a silicone substrate, formed a V-shaped ribbon comprising chromium and vanadium dioxide, which formed a coil when released from the substrate. The coil when heated turned into a micro-catapult with the ability to hurl objects, or a proximity sensor, in which its remote sensing of an object causes a rapid change or micro-explosion in the muscle’s resistance and shape, pushing the object away.

"We’ve created a micro-bimorph dual coil that functions as a powerful torsional muscle, driven thermally or electro-thermally by the phase transition of vanadium dioxide," said the project’s leader Junqiao Wu in a press statement. "Using a simple design and inorganic materials, we achieve superior performance in power density and speed over the motors and actuators now used in integrated micro-systems."
Vanadium dioxide boasts several useful qualities for creating miniaturized artificial muscles and motors. An insulator at low temperatures, it abruptly becomes a conductor at 67° Celsius (152.6° F), a quality which drives its reputation as a potential solution to more energy efficient electronic devices. In addition, the vanadium dioxide crystals undergo a change in their physical form when warmed, contracting along one dimension while expanding along the other two.
During this experiment, the vanadium dioxide muscles displayed a rotational speed of 200,000 rpm, an amplitude of 500 to 2,000 degrees per millimeters in length and an energy power density of up to approximately 39 kilowatts per kilogram, figures that Wu says are unprecedented.
"These metrics are all orders of magnitudes higher than existing torsional motors based on electrostatics, magnetics, carbon nanotubes or piezoelectrics," he said. "With its combination of power and multi-functionality, our micro-muscle shows great potential for applications that require a high level of functionality integration in a small space."
You can see both the "hurling" and the "micro-explosion" abilities of the muscle in the video below.
The team's research is published in the online version of Advanced Materials.


Source: Berkeley Lab

Samsung's new Smart TVs will be controlled with a wag of your finger

Samsung's 2014 Smart TVs will debut at CES 2014 with improved voice commands and 'finger gesture' controls

It seems not even the impending holiday is stopping some of the tech industry's heavy hitters from teasing their standout products for the 2014 CES. First LG and Samsung unveiled separate 105-inch curved UHD TVs on the same day, and now Samsung is dropping some details on its Smart TVs for next year. In addition to less complicated voice commands, the company's 2014 Smart TV line will allow the use of "finger gestures" for basic controls like changing the channel, adjusting the volume, or rewinding video.
The improved voice command system cuts down on how many specific commands need to be given for certain controls, so users can interact with the TV much more quickly. For example, instead of saying "change channel" followed by "channel number [fill in the blank]" to switch to a new station, viewers can now just say the channel number on its own.
Samsung's current crop of Smart TVs already feature voice commands attuned to the native languages of 11 different countries, but the 2014 models will raise that number to 23 to reach a wider market. Additionally, searching the internet with voice commands will cause a window showing their results to pop up on the bottom of the screen, so they can keep watching video at the same time.
The most prominent new feature however is an enhanced gesture control system that only requires the use of one finger. According to Samsung, users will be able to cycle through menus and channels by pointing at the display and making certain movements. So far though, the only specific gesture the company has mentioned is that moving your finger in a counterclockwise motion will stop a video or scroll backwards through selections on the screen.
Unfortunately Samsung seems to only be offering a small taste of what's to come, since those are the only details it's revealed for the time being – no word on a price or release date for any of its new Smart TVs just yet. It seems we'll have to wait until CES in January to find out anything more.


Source: Samsung

Plant-based magnetic microswimmers to deliver drugs more precisely

Bioinspired magnetically propelled helical microswimmers could deliver drugs at the right location and time, without any side effects (Image: UCSD)
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If you remember the 1966 science fiction film Fantastic Voyage, you'll recall how miniaturized government agents traveled through blood vessels in a tiny submarine, in their attempt remove a blood clot from a scientist's brain. Synthetic nanomotors that can do the same job have been the subject of numerous research efforts and now University of California, San Diego (UCSD) researchers report that they've created powerful biodegradable "microswimmers" that can deliver drugs more precisely, derived from common plants like passion fruit and wild banana.
Creating nano-sized machines that can move through bodily fluids is extremely challenging, because physics works differently at the nanoscale level. While powering a nanovehicle adequately and steering it to the right place are problems in themselves, getting such minute machines to move through blood, for instance, means they'll need to overcome viscous forces or the stickiness and thickness of blood at that level.
"It is like swimming through honey for a human," Wei Gao, a researcher at UCSD's Nanoengineering Lab tells Gizmag.
Drawing inspiration from nature, the team developed magnetically-propelled synthetic nanomotors that moved in a corkscrew fashion, but these required expensive equipment and fabrication processes that made them impractical for large scale production. Exploring natural plant structures they could use instead, led them to examine the water transportation cells or Xylem tissue in plants like African Lily, Indian Hawthorn and others.
After removing spiral microstructures about the width of a cotton fiber from the plant's stems and coating them with fine layers of nickel and titanium, they ended up with microswimmers they could control magnetically.
"Under a rotating magnetic field, the microswimmers will start to rotate," Joseph Wang, the Head of the Lab, tells us. "The helical structures can transform the rotation around their helical axis into a translational corkscrew motion."

Not only can these helical microswimmers move more powerfully through biological fluids, thanks to this unique propulsion behavior, but they are also more efficient and can be propelled really fast by varying the strength of the magnetic field.
"Our plant-based microswimmer can swim at a high speed of 250 μm/s, making it one of the fastest magnetic propelled motors," states Gao.
That's effectively five times its body length per second, equivalent to Usain Bolt's World Record of running 100 meters in 9.58 seconds. Compared to current nanoparticle-based drug delivery systems that rely on diffusion, that's blindingly fast.
The plant base also makes it easy to embed drugs into the structure or have it carry drug-loaded nanoparticles and trigger their release via heat, temperature or light. Not only are these microswimmers biocompatible and biodegradable, it's simple to produce huge quantities of them quickly and inexpensively. For instance, one leaf of the Indian Hawthorn can produce around 4,500 microswimmers while a 30-cm (11.8-in) bit of the African lily's stem yields over 1,500,000 of them.
Propelling them magnetically enables very precise steering, allowing drugs to be delivered into deep tumor tissue at the right location and time. Since there aren't any toxic-fuel-laden nanomotors being sent into the body, there's no question of side effects.
"The majority of intravenously administered therapeutic nanoparticles are also reaching normal tissues, resulting in considerable adverse side effects," explains Gao. "In our case, we can control the movement of the swimmer and directly deliver the drug into the cancer cells."
There's more work to be done, before they can be deployed for actual drug delivery.
"For propulsion in the real human body, the microswimmer will face much more complex environments," Gao tells us. "It needs to overcome various challenges such as a fast-moving blood stream and obstacles such as cells and proteins. Currently, we are still far away from a real nanosubmarine, as in the movie. However, we are getting closer and closer. "
Additional potential applications include removing contaminants from the environment, manufacturing nanoscale devices, biosensing and more. The scientists' paper describing the development was recently published in the journal Nano Letters.
Sources: UCSD Nanoengineering Lab, American Chemical Society

TellSpec hand-held scanner identifies what's in your food

TellSpec is a handheld food scanner that connects to your smartphone to inform you about allergens, chemicals, nutrients, calories, and the ingredients present in any food item (Image: TellSpec)
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Figuring out whether the fries on your plate contain traces of trans-fat, or if those celery sticks are truly pesticide-free can be tricky, if not impossible. That's why Isabel Hoffmann along with mathematician Stephen Watson set out to create TellSpec, a hand-held device that you can simply point at a food item, to identify what's in it. Not only does the device warn you about chemicals, allergens and ingredients you'd rather avoid, it'll also help you figure out food sensitivities and track your vitamin intake. The goal, the company says, is to help people make clean food choices by letting them "check their food as easily as they check their mail."

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"We want to promote healthier eating, alert those who have allergies and educate consumers by telling them exactly what’s in their food – beyond what the label says," Hoffman tells Gizmag.
The device utilizes a small Raman spectrometer, a unique cloud-based algorithm and a simple smartphone app. Scanning a food item on the plate or in a shopping aisle is as simple as aiming TellSpec at it and pushing a button. It beams a low-powered laser at the item and analyzes the reflected light waves to identify the chemical makeup of the food.
This data is uploaded to the analysis engine which processes the information, compares it to reference spectra, interprets the results with the help of a database, and downloads the results to the user's smartphone. Hoffman states that the device can successfully identify foods and their ingredients approximately 97.7 percent of the time after scanning the food's surface.

"Depending on how transparent the surface of the food is, the more accurate the scan will be," explains Hoffman. "Users must understand that these scans can only go so deep. To scan a Twinkie, the user could do two separate scans for a more accurate reading. One at the surface and then a second in the center of the Twinkie."
The team scanned 3,000 food items to create the initial database, but the device can potentially identify an unlimited number of ingredients, according to Hoffman. Its ability to make identifications is expected to increase exponentially as the number of TellSpec users grow, and add their own scans of different food items. Initially the company plans to direct 82 beta food testers early next spring (Northern Hemisphere) to start TellSpecing as soon as the devices become available, increasing the breadth and depth of the food data.
"This is the crowd-sourced element of our clean food revolution," Hoffman tells us. "It is literally in the hands of the people. It is they who will truly participate actively in creating a global footprint of food data.The food database is an evolving number – the more people scan, the more the database grows and the more precise the scans become."
We've seen devices like the iTube which turns a smartphone into an allergen sensor, but TellSpec is designed to be a smart device. It will do more than tell you if there's Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) in that soup mix or if those chips are truly gluten-free. It can also give you the background story on little-known ingredients like Tartrazine, a synthetic lemon yellow that's commonly used as food coloring. For the calorie conscious, TellSpec can breakdown the amount of sugars, fats and more per gram of a scanned food item. It can help users ascertain that they stay within recommended limits, when it comes to their intake of toxic substances like mercury.

Plans are in the works to have the device calculate the volume of food a person consumes, too. While it doesn't diagnose food sensitivities or allergies, users who are uncertain about food triggers can log in symptoms after they've eaten something (like feeling uncomfortable after drinking a glass of milk) to get TellSpec's suggestions.
"It will ask you how you feel," Hoffman explains. "If you tell Tellspec you feel bloated, it will suggest that it may be caused by lactose and that you should check with your doctor about the possibility of an allergy."
Hoffman hopes that the device will find use as a holistic health tool, as its food database grows larger and people use it in real time to register any disturbing symptoms.
"Eventually, the food data 'bank' will compile across time, peoples' historical food data and individual symptoms at a global level," says Hoffman. "These correlations between how people feel and what they really eat will eventually lead to a 'TellSpecodedia' of food data and personalized health information."

All the TellSpec data will be open source, allowing anyone to use the data to create their own health-based apps. For instance, a diabetic app that tracks blood sugar levels could utilize TellSpec data to track what sugars or carbohydrates the user consumes, and identify ingredients in their food that would also convert into sugar.
"By sharing our API with the world, we want TellSpec to engage the crowd-sourcing power that a group and population bring to any problem," says Hoffman. "One or two brains on any food issue would not yield the answers that the world could definitely benefit from. We want this to be an open source for new applications and new fields of study that grow from a source of food data that has never been available before."
TellSpec is currently under development, after raising three times its funding goal on Indiegogo. Shipping is slated to begin in August 2014. Its US$320 price tag includes one year of free analysis of food scans, with further analyses being made available through subscription plans.
Here's a first look at the device.


Source: TellSpec

Review: Qualcomm Toq smartwatch

Gizmag reviews the Qualcomm Toq smartwatch, with its gorgeous Mirasol display
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Manufacturers are still figuring out what exactly customers want out of smartwatches – if anything at all. So it kinda makes sense that a company like Qualcomm would make a device that's meant to showcase its design and hardware for future smartwatch-makers. Read on, as Gizmag reviews a consumer product that doubles as a reference design, the Qualcomm Toq smartwatch.

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Look and feel

I think the Toq's design is pretty much spot-on. It sports a gorgeous Mirasol display (more on that in a second), its face is the thinnest of any smartwatch I've used, and it's plenty comfortable to wear. Qualcomm also snuck the watch's battery into the band's clasp, which helped to keep that face slim and trim.
The Toq's band is a permanent part of the watch, so there's no swapping with another one, like some of the other smartwatches let you do. The band is made of a textured and flexible plastic, and it feels much higher-end than the bands on some of the other early smartwatches.

You do actually have to cut the Toq's band when setting it up, though, to fit to your wrist. It can be resized again to a smaller size, but, once you cut it, it can never be sized bigger again. So you'd better not gain any weight around your wrist if you don't want your investment to go down the toilet. This might also give you some trouble if you plan on selling the Toq or passing it on to a friend.

Mirasol

Of all the early smartwatches, the Qualcomm Toq's screen is my favorite. The Mirasol display on this puppy is colorful, sharp (223 pixels per inch), and looks outstanding under direct sunlight. Even if the Toq is far from a must-have consumer product, it serves as a great showcase for Mirasol display tech in future smartwatches. I hope the makers of tomorrow's batch of watches are paying attention, and striking deals with Qualcomm to use the tech again.
One of the keys here is that the Toq's screen is always on, always ready to be looked at. And if you choose a clock face with a weather, stock, or calendar widget, then you have some key info that's never more than a glance away.

One thing the Mirasol display doesn't have is a wide range of colors. This isn't a nuanced palette like you'd find on a high-quality tablet, smartphone, or laptop display. It's more like black, white, and one varation each of blue, orange, yellow, red, green, and purple. There may or may not actually be more color variation than that, but that's the general effect that I see.
What the Toq's Mirasol display lacks in color variation, though, it makes up for in outdoor readability. It picks up reflections, but they never come off as distracting glare. It's also readable in moderate indoor lighting. If it gets too dark, you can double-tap its band just above the screen to fire up its backlight. And unlike the Pebble smartwatch, the Toq's display is a touch screen, so no need to fiddle with physical buttons for anything.

What it does

Like nearly every other smartwatch so far, the Toq is a smartphone accessory, not a smartphone replacement. You'll need to pair it (via Bluetooth) with an Android phone running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich or higher. It isn't compatible with iPhones, Blackberries, or Windows Phones.
Smartwatches like the Samsung Galaxy Gear try, with varying degrees of success, to cram in long lists of features and functions. The Toq, however, has a much smaller feature set. Qualcomm describes the watch as a glanceable second screen for your smartphone, and I think that's a pretty accurate description. It's primarily a notification terminal for your wrist.

Fortunately the Toq handles its main job pretty well. It supports full Android notifications, so there aren't any apps that will be left out of the party. You can also customize which apps it shows notifications from, so your wrist doesn't get spammed with Candy Crush alerts. Like other smartwatches, of course, it vibrates your wrist to let you know when those notifications come in.
If you only get one new email, the Toq's notification center will show you the full message, no matter how long it is (the actual alert will be abbreviated, but the notification applet will show the full message). But if you have more than one new email come in, the Toq will cram short summaries of all of them onto one card, leaving longer emails cut off.
I find this to be an annoying limit. If I'm buying an expensive product just to get notifications on my wrist, I want to be able to read full emails – no matter how many and how long.

That notification center lives in the Toq's applet screen. From the watch's main clock screen (which you can choose from among fourteen options), tap the watch's band just below its face, and you'll enter the applet center. There you'll see icons for your recent phone and SMS history, calendar events, music controls, weather, stocks, and recent notifications. There's also a watch status icon and an applet for the Toq's settings. You can swipe to the right to back out of any applet, and you tap on the band below the screen again to return to the main clock screen.
The Toq doesn't have a microphone or speaker, so you can't do things like make phone calls or use Google Now voice control on your wrist. If you use a Bluetooth headset, though, you can use the Toq to initiate a call without pulling out your phone. There's also no camera, though it's debatable whether that's really an essential smartwatch feature.
The Toq's feature set is similar to rivals like the Pebble and Sony SmartWatch 2, but with one big omission: there aren't yet any compatible fitness-tracking apps. The wrist is a great place to show glanceable pedometer info from a run or walk, so I'm not sure why Qualcomm didn't bother partnering with someone for that. It could easily be added with a future software update, but so far no dice.

Charging and battery life

The Toq's Mirasol display uses very little power, which helps give the watch outstanding battery life. In my use, after six full days off the charger, the Toq still had about 25 percent battery remaining. Granted, this was mostly with light use, so it could drain faster if you use the backlight frequently or read tons of notifications. All in all, though, we're looking at insane uptimes, the best I've seen on a smartwatch.
It's a little ironic, then, that the Toq is the easiest to charge of all the current smartwatches. It ships with a wireless charging station, and it seems to be just about the ideal way to go for smartwatches. Open the folding dock, press a button to flip up a stand, and rest the watch on the sensors in front of it. No plugs, no cords (apart from the one that connects to the dock), just drop your watch on the station and go. The dock also has sections for docking Qualcomm's optional wireless earbuds, which will launch some time in 2014.

Worth it?

So is the Qualcomm Toq worth buying? Well, I can see both sides here. On one hand, I think its screen, design, and battery life are the best of all the early smartwatches. Its bundled wireless charger is a piece of cake to use, and the watch has an overall high-end aesthetic.
On the other hand ... well, the Toq doesn't really do a whole lot. It handles notifications well, but if you're trying to read multiple emails at once, you'd better hope they're all really short. You can check stocks, the weather, and calendar events, but you can forget about fitness tracking, phone calls, or voice control. Oh, and did we mention that its US$350 price tag makes it the most expensive smartwatch around?
So as a consumer product right now, the Toq is a mixed bag. It has a nice simple focus, but we wouldn't blame you for wanting more functionality for your money.
As a showcase device, though, I think Qualcomm hit the nail right on the head. I would love to see the company's Mirasol screens, design sensibilities, and wireless charging in the next wave of smartwatches. If smartwatch OEMs use the Toq as a starting point, add some new killer features and more fully-baked software, and get the price down closer to $200-250, then they could be onto something.
The Qualcomm Toq is recommended if you're looking for a simple, glanceable second display on your wrist – and you don't mind paying a premium for it. It's highly recommended, though, for smartwatch-makers who are seeking display, design, and charging inspiration for their future products.
The Toq is available now from the product page and Amazon links below.


Product page: Qualcomm Toq

Portable scanner designed to make eye exams quicker and easier Tweet

One of two versions of MIT's prototype portable scanner
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If you're like a lot of people, you don't make an annual trip to the ophthalmologist to get your eyes checked ... and you really ought to, in order to catch any problems before it's too late. If it were possible to get them checked at a regular doctor's office or clinic, though, perhaps you might do so more often. That's one of the reasons that a team at MIT have designed a new hand-held retinal scanner, that can quickly and easily be used anywhere.
Ordinarily, eye exams are carried out using relatively large instruments that are permanently located in an optometrist or ophthalmologist's office. The portable prototype MIT device, by contrast, is about the size of a consumer camcorder. It can "read" a patient's eye in seconds, using a single measurement to look for conditions such as diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma and macular degeneration.
It utilizes an existing technique known as optical coherence tomography (OCT), in which beams of infrared light are shone onto the retina. By measuring both how long it takes those beams to reflect back, and the intensity of those reflections, the scanner is able to build up a radar-like 3D image of the retina. It's the same technology used by the traditional larger scanners, although the development of a miniaturized mirror for scanning the imaging beam allows it to be used in the new device.
One challenge with a hand-held scanner is the fact that the user's shakes could result in blurred images. To correct for that, the MIT device quickly performs several scans of the same part of the retina, from different directions. Those scans are then combined to form one composite three-dimensional image, with any details that are missed in one scan being caught by another. The system can also compensate for unintentional movements of the patient's eye.
Other portable retinal scanners do already exist, although this feature – along with the high-speed 3D scanning and the miniaturized mirror – are said to be unique to this prototype.

Two versions of the device have been lab-tested, and found to produce results similar in quality to those of traditional larger OCT scanners. It is hoped that once developed further, the smaller scanners could be used not only in regular doctors' offices but also in developing nations, where the regular equipment simply isn't available. Before that can happen, however, additional research will be required to bring down the cost of the device.
MIT collaborated with Praevium/Thorlabs and Germany's University of Erlangen on the research, which is outlined in a paper recently published in the journal Biomedical Optics Express.

Source: The Optical Society

Spike puts laser measurement hardware on the back of a smartphone

Through the Spike smartphone app, users are able to capture, measure, 3D model and share any object up to 200 yards (183 m) away with what the company says is laser accuracy
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Traditionally, the technology that goes into laser hardware for surveying and 3D modeling has been the plaything of architects, surveyors and engineers. But now, with a view to expanding into the consumer market, Virginia-based IkeGPS wants to bring this functionality to the mainstream. And what better way to do it than sticking it on the back of a smartphone?

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Spike builds on the company's established GIS (geographic information systems) tools, which were used by the UN in the wake of natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. The device attaches to the back of a smartphone and combines a built-in laser range finder, 3D compass and Bluetooth chip with the phone's camera and GPS.
Users take a photo of the object they wish to measure through the Spike companion app on their smartphone (the team has nearly completed an Android app and has an iOS app in development). The hardware then measures key metrics, such as distance, direction and volume and communicates this data to the smartphone via Bluetooth, displaying the augmented results on the screen. Users can then share this data, or use it to produce 3D models with what the company says is laser accuracy.
According to it's successful Kickstarter campaign page, the company will allow third party app developers access to an API (application programming interface), enabling the embedding of specialist ikeTools into applications in anticipation of augmented reality and location based services apps.

Spike is also compatible with 3D modeling software SketchUp. This means that rather than importing measurements manually, users can take an image with Spike to reproduce a scalable model of the object or building and 3D-print it as required.
The entire device weighs approximately 100 g (3.5 oz) and measures 90 x 50 x 20 mm (3.5 x 2 x .8 in). The 905 nm, Class 1 Eyesafe laser has a range of 2 to 200 m (6 to 600 ft) with a resolution of ±0.2 m (8 in). Spike is powered by an internal Li-ion cell battery recharged via a Micro USB connector, with each charge lasting two days of typical use, according to the company.
Spike can be pre-ordered via IkeGPS's website for US$559 with shipping (included) estimated for May 2014.
You can hear from the team behind Spike in the video below.


Source: ikeGPS

McLaren's ultrasonic force field to replace windshield wipers

Will the F1 be among the last of McLaren's cars to have windshield wipers? (Photo: McLaren)
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Windshield wipers are life-savers, but can also drive one to distraction with their incessant streaking and chattering. Well, the tyranny of the wipers may soon be over. McLaren Automotive’s chief designer Frank Stephenson has told The Sunday Times that the performance motoring company is investigating the use of "ultrasonic force fields" to replace windshield wipers in automobiles. While Stephenson referred to a military source for McLaren's tech, there appears to be very little public information on how such force fields might clean a windshield during a storm, so I'm taking a look at the patent history to see how this might be accomplished.
Windshield wipers have been around nearly as long as the passenger car. Invented in 1903 by Mary Anderson, the original was operated by a handle that extended through the windshield frame, and rotated a spring-loaded rubber wiper across the windshield. An interesting footnote to this invention is that it was aimed at electric cars, although the patent was broad enough to cover its use on internal combustion vehicles.
The concept developed through the years. In 1919, a windshield wiper system powered by engine vacuum was developed, although the function was taken over by electric motors in the 1960s. In the late 1950s, engine vacuum was again applied to operate the first intermittent wipers, in which mode the wipers were powered by air rushing into the vacuum stored in a small canister, and stopped when the pressure difference between the outside air and the canister became too small to power the wipers.

Patents aplenty

The concept of ultrasonic wiperless windshield cleaners can be tracked back to the early 1960s. US Patent 3171683 (filed in 1963) covers Arthur Ludwig's concept for a "Windshield assembly for motor vehicles and the like." (Patentese is such a fun language.) Ludwig was an inventor with a number of patents for various windshield wiper designs. This early design was basically an array of ultrasonic transducers fixed to the top and bottom of a windshield and driven by a high frequency oscillator.

Switching was arranged to give three modes of operation; top transducers only, bottom transducers only, and all transducers. The patent claimed that the different modes were suited for different conditions. In essence, the transducers shake the glass, so that rain, snow, mud, etc. do not stick. However, there appears to be no evidence that the concept was ever demonstrated – not an unusual situation where the utility of an invention is considered self-evident.
The next significant advance in ultrasonic windshield cleaners was made by Kenro Motoda. His approach, as recorded in US Patent 4768256 (filed in 1986), looks rather like Ludwig's, in that there are a set of ultrasonic transducers fixed onto the windshield. However, his transducers are actually launchers for surface acoustic waves. Unlike conventional vibrations, which generally produce a pattern of standing (stationary) waves on the surface of the glass, surface acoustic waves move the surface of the glass in an elliptical pattern that propagates across the glass, hopefully carrying along with it water, dirt, and other muck obscuring the driver's view.

While the progressive motion of the surface acoustic waves should be more effective than the simple shaking of the Ludwig design, it appears that Motoda's design was never produced.
A number of modifications of Motoda's basic design were patented over the years, including one that involved the piezoelectric polymer polyvinylidine fluoride being sandwiched between transparent conducting electrodes to generate the surface acoustic waves, (Broussoux et al, US Patent 5172024 (1990)); as well as applications to cleaning semiconductor wafers (Akatsu et al., US Patent 6021789 (1998)), and for shaking dust from camera optics (Urakami et al., US Patent 8063536 (2009).
The most recent patent I can find on ultrasonic windshield washers is WO2012095643, filed in 2011 by a small UK engineering firm, Echovista Systems Ltd. While the basic technique is still that of Motoda, the Trevett brothers (principals in Echovista) have expanded the possible modes of usage to include ultrasonic vaporization of precipitation from the windshield, the use of other vibrational modes which may be more effective in removing precipitation, using the heating of the windshield caused by the ultrasonic vibration to melt ice and snow and de-fog the windshield, and the use of a windshield washing liquid nozzle, having an effect similar to plunging the windshield into an ultrasonic cleaner.
Echovista also appears to have done significant testing on its ultrasonic washer, identifying maximum effectiveness is obtained with an ultrasonic frequency of about 2 MHz, corresponding to an ultrasonic wavelength of about 2.5 mm (0.1 in).

McLaren's options

What will be McLaren's approach to ultrasonic windshield washers? Well, it could do worse than buying up Echovista, as these seem to be the folks claiming the field as their reason for existence. Regardless, McLaren is likely to use some variation of the existing designs, as these seem to have pretty well covered the ground in terms of ultrasonic cleaning of glass.
Still, there are at least three variations that might increase the effectiveness and utility of ultrasonics. The simplest would be to constantly vary the ultrasonic frequency to insure that the wave couples well to a larger range of raindrop and snowflake sizes. Next in complexity is to make the ultrasonic generators capable of delivering an occasional shock wave; a pulse of very high intensity ultrasonics that would help dislodge recalcitrant clinging deposits on the windshield.
The ultimate version, however, would be to include phased array focusing of the ultrasonics within the windshield. If receivers for the ultrasonic waves are placed around the window, they can be used as a type of sonar to provide information on what is on the windshield. If there is a particularly obstinate lump (perhaps a bird dropping or a bit of sap on the glass), its location can be determined from the received data. Then the relative phases of the ultrasonic transducers can be set so that there is a huge spike of ultrasonic energy underneath the lump. This focused energy would allow the washer to remove befouling lumps that the washer globally lacks the energy to dislodge.
Summing up, it appears there are two approaches to ultrasonic windshield washers: brute force and cleverness. Given potential problems with longevity of the ultrasonic transducers, and the expense of high-power megahertz oscillators, it isn't immediately clear which approach will be chosen. However, as McLaren is not known for choosing low-tech answers, I suspect its solution will be on the clever side. The question is whether it will be sufficiently effective to pass all the local bodies that currently require windshield wipers on motor vehicles? Time will tell.
The video below illustrates how ultrasonic waves can clear a surface of debris. The good part starts at about 1:50.
Source: US Patents and Trademark Office

2014 Jeep Cherokee gets disconnecting AWD technology

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The 2014 Jeep Cherokee will feature the EcoTrac Disconnecting All Wheel Drive system (Photo: Chrysler)
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Set to debut in the 2014 Jeep Cherokee, the EcoTrac Disconnecting AWD driveline system is designed to improve fuel efficiency by disengaging components from the driveline when not required, so that only power is delivered to the front wheels.
Back in February we reported that Jeep was taking a back-to-the-future approach in 2014 with the relaunch of the Cherokee. And while the resurrection of this classic was met with a mixed response from our readers, mostly critical of the same-sameness of the SUV design unveiled, we can now expand on how Jeep hopes to realize “fuel economy improvements of more than 45 percent” claimed at the time. This will in part be achieved by EcoTrac.
Produced by American Axle and Manufacturing (AAM), EcoTrac is billed as "the automotive industry's first disconnecting all-wheel-drive (AWD) system." It improves fuel economy by disengaging rotating parts of the driveline when not in use. According to AAM, the system saves 0.75 hp at 65 mph.

The technology effectively cuts the driveline in half, disconnecting the power transfer unit (PTU) and rear drive module (RDM) when in front-wheel drive mode. This reduces inertia and drag created by the movement of unnecessary components associated with powering the rear wheels.
EcoTrac can either be activated directly by the driver or automatically by the electronic control unit, which kicks-in under conditions such as rain, change in slope or change in temperature. These trigger points can also be customized by the driver.
When the control unit detects AWD is needed, the system engages utilizing a wet clutch in the RDM to bring the rear driveline up to the same speed as the PTU. This is designed to provide a seamless engagement of AWD without any interruption to the driver or vehicle performance. The system reverts back front-wheel drive mode once it senses conditions are suitable.
To date AMM has been granted five US patents for EcoTrac and has another nine pending.


Source: AMM