Int Automate

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/revolutionary-new-magnetic-sideways-running-elevators-hit-hong-kong-1477315

Hong Kong is set to see revolutionary new lifts in its skyscrapers.

German lift manufacturer ThyssenKrupp is to introduce maglev technology to power the city's lifts. The system, called "Multi", does not use cables. Instead, magnets move lifts both horizontally and vertically. The company claims that waiting times for its lifts will never exceed 30 seconds.

The new system uses the magnetic levitation, or "maglev", technology which powers high-speed trains that hover over tracks. Several lifts will be able to use a single shaft at speeds of five metres per second.

So far the lift design has taken two years of research and development. According to a spokesperson the company is "setting up talks with building developers in Hong Kong to explore possibilities for the new technology".

"The system is dedicated to mid and high-rise buildings, which makes Hong Kong a primary market for Thyssenkrupp," he told Hong Kong's Sunday Morning Post.

Hong Kong has more than 60,000 lifts, more than double the number in New York and the most in the world for a city of its size, according to the city's Electrical and Mechanical Services Department. The city's 1,300 skyscrapers use a high proportion of them.

ThyssenKrupp says that the design, which it hails as the "the holy grail of the elevator industry", will increase lift capacity by half. Moreover, the design uses smaller shafts than current lifts.

The first installation in Hong Kong is some way off, however. ThyssenKrupp says that a prototype will be operational by 2016, sited in a 245-metre test tower which is under construction in Germany.

Revolutionary New Magnetic Sideways-Running Elevators To Hit Hong Kong New cable-free technology enables lifts to move vertically and horizontally

The first ever commercial brain scan for the purpose of recording thoughts and memories for future playback took place in September. The inaugural patient of Millenium Magnetic Technologies (MMT) thought recording technology was software developer Anthony Broussard from Houston Texas, who paid around £1,200 to have his memories preserved.

"Some people call it thought identification but it's essentially mind reading," Donald Marks, founder and chief science officer of MMT, told IBTimes UK. "The visual reconstruction (of the thoughts) is kind of crude right now but the data is definitely there and it will get better, it's just a matter of refinement.

"That information is stored - once you've recorded that information it's there forever. In the future we'll be able to reconstruct the data we have now much better."

Based on open source technology and programming, LUZ is a lighting project that product designer Marina Mellado designed and targeted to those people who are physically and psychologically affected by the lack of sun or daylight.

"Luz is a one meter diameter ring of light. It connects two LED stripes RGB SMD5050 to an Adafruit TCS34725 sensor ( which I use to get the temperature of colour (K) and the light intensity (Lux) Values ) and an Arduino Uno."

The electronic system is programmed to modify gradually the light-color sensibility of the lamp depending on the weather conditions when the sensor is positioned by the window.

Check the video below to see the lamp in action:
http://vimeo.com/98864471

Source:
http://blog.arduino.cc/2014/11/21/global-emotional-light-with-arduino/

An engineered scallop that is only a fraction of a millimeter in size and that is capable of swimming in biomedically relevant fluids has been developed by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart.
Designing robots on the micro or nano scale (like, small enough to fit inside your body) is all about simplicity. There just isn’t room for complex motors or actuation systems. There’s barely room for any electronics whatsoever, not to mention batteries, which is why robots that can swim inside your bloodstream or zip around your eyeballs are often driven by magnetic fields. However, magnetic fields drag around anything and everything that happens to be magnetic, so in general, they’re best for controlling just one single microrobot robot at a time. Ideally, you’d want robots that can swim all by themselves, and a robotic micro-scallop, announced today in Nature Communications, could be the answer.

When we’re thinking about robotic microswimmers motion, the place to start is with understanding how fluids (specifically, biological fluids) work at very small scales. Blood doesn’t behave like water does, in that blood is what’s called a non-Newtonian fluid. All that this means is that blood behaves differently (it changes viscosity, becoming thicker or thinner) depending on how much force you’re exerting on it. The classic example of a non-Newtonian fluid is oobleck, which you can make yourself by mixing one part water with two parts corn starch. Oobleck acts like a liquid until you exert a bunch of force on it (say, by rapidly trying to push your hand into it), at which point its viscosity increases to the point where it’s nearly solid.

These non-Newtonian fluids represent most of the liquid stuff that you have going on in your body (blood, joint fluid, eyeball goo, etc), which, while it sounds like it would be more complicated to swim through, is actually an opportunity for robots. Here’s why:

At very small scales, robotic actuators tend to be simplistic and reciprocal. That is, they move back and forth, as opposed to around and around, like you’d see with a traditional motor. In water (or another Newtonian fluid), it’s hard to make a simple swimming robot out of reciprocal motions, because the back and forth motion exerts the same amount of force in both directions, and the robot just moves forward a little, and backward a little, over and over. Biological microorganisms generally do not use reciprocal motions to get around in fluids for this exact reason, instead relying on nonreciprocal motions of flagella and cilia.

However, if we’re dealing with a non-Newtonian fluid, this rule (it’s actually a theorem called the Scallop theorem) doesn’t apply anymore, meaning that it should be possible to use reciprocal movements to get around. A team of researchers led by Prof. Peer Fischer at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, in Germany, have figured out how, and appropriately enough, it’s a microscopic robot that’s based on the scallop:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ05z6ebKDQ

As we discussed above, these robots are true swimmers. This particular version is powered by an external magnetic field, but it’s just providing energy input, not dragging the robot around directly as other microbots do. And there are plenty of kinds of micro-scale reciprocal actuators that could be used, like piezoelectrics, bimetal strips, shape memory alloys, or heat or light-actuated polymers. There’s lots of design optimizations that can be made as well, like making the micro-scallop more streamlined or “optimizing its surface morphology,” whatever that means.

The researchers say that the micro-scallop is more of a “general scheme” for micro-robots rather than a specific micro-robot that’s intended to do anything in particular. It’ll be interesting to see how this design evolves, hopefully to something that you can inject into yourself to fix everything that could ever be wrong with you. Ever.

Swimming Robotic Micro-Scallop A team led by Prof. Peer Fischer from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, Germany [http://www.is.mpg.de/fischer] has developed an ...

Bionic bugs could help save humans trapped after disasters Researchers at North Carolina State University fitted cockroaches with electrical backpacks (pictured) complete with tiny microphones to detect the faintest of sounds.

Robots are getting less expensive, more nimble, and smart than ever. The following examples exemplify new trends in industrial automation.
Nature has always inspired robotics. More complex, fluid movement open new avenues in manufacturing. Festo's BionicOpter is the latest example. Imitating the dragonfly, it boasts not only lightweight and fully integrated open- and closed-loop systems, but also “13 degrees of freedom.” User can control the shared flapping frequency and twisting of each wing. Plus, each wing has an amplitude controller that regulates the intensity of the thrust. Control and movement is getting more refined than ever.
Toshiba Machine showed off its new TVL 500 vertical, articulated robot for only the second time in the US at Design News’ Design & Manufacturing show in Schaumburg, Ill. Known as an industry leader with top-of-line robotics, Toshiba went back to the drawing board with this model, looking for ways to reduce cost without losing efficiency.
The TVL 500 features a revamped, simpler controller. That alone reduced the price $3,000. Toshiba Machine further streamlined its manufacturing process, taking advantage of standardization to reduce price point. The new robotic arm also consumes less power, saving ongoing costs in manufacturing. The final product has slower acceleration and deceleration than fancier models, but the overall speed is as good as older models. It’s robotics for everyone.
Optimal Design challenged it's designers to recreate the movement of a mallard duck in flight.

FER Robotics’ Active Contact Fl**ge lets robotic arms maintain steady contact pressure over time. The fl**ge means pressure stays the same over the course of a day and over curved surfaces. This dexterity is vital in applications like sanding, where too much pressure can gouge an object. The arm senses the material and responds automatically.

Butler, a new generation of robots from Wasserbauer GmbH, feature a built-in database, ITTIA DB SQL. To make intelligent decisions, the robots collect information from sensors and build a database outlining the surroundings. No need to pull data from an outside source; the data is right in the system, making it faster and more reliable. The robots make decisions themselves. Of course, humans can also instruct them from tablets that tap into the database.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7ogRRdFsNU

Control Networks: Remote Machine Support Must Be Everywhere Remote Monitoring, Analysis, Support and Control Is Getting More Routine and Secure, More Comprehensive in its Scope and Capabilities, and May Even Gather Enough Data to Improve Machine Designs

At its second annual user group conference, Inductive Automation explains the need to rethink your SCADA and MES applications to future proof your production operations and your business.

By
David Greenfield, Director of Content/Editor-in-Chief

Kicking off Inductive Automation’s 2014 user conference, Don Pearson, chief strategy officer, made it clear that the company sees the time as ripe for disruption in the HMI/SCADA technology space. Referencing a range of information—from Bill Ruh, vice president of GE’s Global Software Center, saying in a recent Fast Company article: Industrial companies who are “not making the kind of investments we're making [in the Industrial Internet], it's like someone in the retail sector now saying, 'We want to be like Amazon too.' But you can't be like Amazon. It's too late…” to the Automation World article “Rethink SCADA”—Pearson established the groundwork to introduce Inductive Automation’s future-proofing stance amid a potential HMI/SCADA shakeup.

“Older systems just weren’t built to handle the amount of data that’s being processed today” and will increasingly be processed in the near future, Pearson said, stressing the need for industry to rethink how and what systems it uses for common applications such as SCADA, HMI, and MES. With the growing need for industry to collect and analyze data as a core competence, Pearson says companies must ensure the systems used to support these activities can be as future-proofed as possible given the long time frames surrounding industrial software and hardware application.
Explaining how Inductive Automation positions itself as a future-proofing technology provider, Steve Hechtman, CEO, president and founder of Inductive Automation said that, though no one can “control the winds of technological change, we can control our own product to be able to adjust.” The key to this ability, for Inductive Automation, is Java.
We’re using Java to build our products while the rest of industry is using “Microsoft-dot-whatever,” said Hechtman.
One differentiator Hechtman suggested as way to determine if the software you are using or looking to use is a victim of “software rot”—wherein software performance deteriorates over time—is the time required to install the software. He noted that many available software packages in the HMI, SCADA, and MES space have been layered with new capabilities added and/or functions acquired through company acquisitions that the software simply doesn't function as well as it should—especially in light of the speed needed to process, manage, and access data today and tomorrow. Looking at the time it takes to install the program can be a good indicator of how capable the software is for current and future operations.
“Years ago, Ignition used to take three minutes to load,” Hechtman said. “Today, it still takes just three minutes to install, even with all the new features we’ve added over the years.”
Version 7.7 of Ignition, released this past July, has 40 new features, nearly all of which resulted from direct customer feedback, said Carl Gould, co-director of software engineering at Inductive Automation. Having customers play an integral role in the product development process is a critical aspect of Inductive Automation’s future proofing, Gould said.
The company has long operated on a “learn, create, deploy, feedback” loop that involves customer input into the process, according to Hechtman. “We have an ethical obligation to future proof the technology and our business to support our user community,” he added.
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To bolster Inductive Automation’s community support process as the company grows, the company has launched a Support Portal athttps://support.inductiveautomation.com/.
The new customer support portal “unifies our different channels of support through a unified ticket system,” said Gould. Beyond access to tutorials, manuals, and the community forum, customers can now access their service ticket online at any time to upload or add information as needed, check on the status of ticket, or interact with support personnel.
Speaking of tutorials, possibly the biggest announcement made at the conference came from Travis Cox, Inductive Automation’s director of training, who announced the opening ofInductive University.
“Ignition has long been described as HMI, SCADA, and MES software,” Cox said, but it’s more than that. You can use it as CRM (customer relationship management) or even a point-of-sales system,” he said, adding that Inductive Automation applies the software for these uses internally.
The problem, Cox said, is that most people don't understand what all Ignition can do. “The typical user only uses 20 percent of the software’s capability,” he said.
To help users learn about the other 80 percent, Inductive University, offers free online training covering the Ignition MES and SCADA software packages. More courses will continually be added. At launch, the site reportedly offers 24 online courses covering 91 topics with 552 online videos.
Cox notes that the courses are all short (typically one to five minutes in length), allowing users to learn Ignition at their own pace. Completion of the courses carries credentials that users can apply toward Ignition certification.

Source:
http://www.automationworld.com/hmi-software/plan-future-proof-automation-software

Lockheed Martin to provide array electronics for TPS-59 air- and missile-search radar
TOBYHANNA, Pa., 16 June 2014.Radar experts at the Lockheed Martin Corp. Mission Systems and Training segment in Syracuse, N.Y., will provide array electronics for the AN/TPS-59A version 3 transportable long-range search radar system under term of a $35.7 million contract awarded Friday by the U.S. Army Contracting Command at Tobyhanna, Pa.
The AN/TPS-59A(V)3 is a long-range 3-D ground-based air surveillance radar. The system is for anti-air warfare to a maximum range of 300 nautical miles, and tactical ballistic missile surveillance to a range of 400 nautical miles.
The radar, the latest version of the TPS-59 fielded in 1985, can detect and track air-breathing targets like aircraft and cruise missiles as far away as 300 miles, and can detect tactical ballistic missiles as far away as 400 miles. It offers 360-degree coverage to elevations of nearly 200 miles.
For this contract Lockheed Martin will concentrate on the TPS-59 radar's array electronics. the radar's 54 transmitters are laid out in 54 rows, each of which operates independently of the others.
Related: Lockheed Martin to upgrade computers in Marine Corps TPS-59 deployable air search radar
The radar handles azimuth scanning by the antenna's mechanical rotation, while handling electronic scanning in elevation by with phase-controlled solid-state row transmitters and row receivers.
The radar uses a scanning pencil-beam to provide wide, accurate coverage. It can track targets as small as one meter wide at ranges to 400 nautical miles. It is designed to provide land forces such as the U.S. Marines with tactical air surveillance, and can contribute to the Navy Cooperate Engagement Capability (CEC).
Lockheed Martin won a $7.5 million U.S. Marine Corps contract last fall to upgrade computers for the AN/TPS-59A(V)3 radar. Lockheed Martin is upgrading the radar system's obsolete Oracle Sun Netra T5220 carrier-grade ruggedized computer servers, the operations console computers, and re-integrate the system's proprietary software.
Engineers are replacing the Oracle Sun Netra T5220 rugged server with the Oracle Sun Netra T4-1 carrier-grade server, which the Marine Corps will procure through the Marine Corps Common Hardware Suite (MCCHS) and provided to Lockheed Martin as government-furnished property.
Related: Navy chooses 6U VME single-board computers from Curtiss-Wright for shipboard radar
The Netra SPARC T4-1 server is powered by the eight-core and four-core SPARC T4 processor with integrated on-chip cryptographic support for wire-speed encryption capabilities. This server offers 16 DIMM slots, which can support 256 gigabytes of memory, four hot-pluggable 2.5-inch drives plus DVD, integrated 10 Gigabit Ethernet networking, and built-in PCI Express Generation 2 expansion.
The server runs the Oracle Solaris operating system and virtualization software such as the Oracle Solaris Zones and Oracle VM Server for SPARC technology.
For the contract announced Friday, Lockheed Martin will do the work in Syracuse, N.Y., Oldsmar, Fla., and Moorestown, N.J., and should be finished by July 2017.
For more information contact Lockheed Martin Mission Systems and Training online at www.lockheedmartin.com/us/mst, or the Army Contracting Command-Tobyhanna at www.tobyhanna.army.mil/organization/contracting.

Japanese scientists create creepy robot newsreader with human face

Anyone watching the morning news over their breakfast cereal may take a while to realise that this word-perfect anchor is not your average newsreader – she is a robot.
Kodomoroid, an android created in Japan, is able to read the news, recite tongue-twisters, speak multiple languages and interact with people.
Designed as a “child” robot, it can use a variety of voices and switch from a deep male base to girlish tones in seconds while operators put in text.
On Tuesday, scientists also unveiled a woman robot called Otonaroid and Telenoid, which is just a mannequin head with pointed arms that serves as a “cuddly” companion.
The two life-size machines have silicon skin and artificial muscles, giving them an eerily human appearance.
Anyone visiting the Miraikan science museum in Tokyo will be able to meet them and interact with the robots, which will act as guides.
They can even make jokes and Kodomoroid said it dreamed of having a television show.
Hiroshi Ishiguro, an Osaka University professor and robotics expert, is using them for research on how people interact with robots and on what differentiates humans from machines.
He said: “Making androids is about exploring what it means to be human, examining the question of what is emotion, what is awareness, what is thinking.”
There were some glitches during Tuesday’s demonstration, with the lips sometimes not moving while the robot spoke.
Mr Ishiguro said that while Japan leads the world in playful companion robots, it was behind the US with military robots.
Hiroshi Ishiguro (L) and Miraikan museum director Mamoru Mori (R) pose with the robots Otonaroid (R) Kodomoroid (L)In over 20 years developing androids, Mr Ishiguro has made a point of mimicking the human appearance, even sending robotic doubles of himself to give overseas lectures.
Other robotics scientists say human appearance is pointless, not to mention unsettling, and robots can look like machines by taking the form of a television screen, for example.
One company recently released a robot reminiscent of C-3PO that will go on the market for less than 200,000 yen (£112,000)
“Robots are now becoming affordable - no different from owning a laptop,” said Mr Ishiguro.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/japanese-scientists-create-creepy-robot-newsreader-with-human-face-9562776.html

How Google Uses Machine Learning And Neural Networks To Optimize Data Centers
Google has released some new research about it efforts to maximize performance and minimize energy use at data centers through machine learning today. Long story short: Google is building superintelligent server farms that can learn from their past performance and improve themselves in the future.
Google’s AI data centers are a 20 percent project – the result of an employee, Jim Gao, working on something he found interesting that falls outside of his standard job description. Google is famous for allowing its employees 20 percent of their work time to come up with passion projects and things that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to work on. Thinking, learning data centers happened to be Gao’s main area of interest.
Gao researched machine learning and then worked on building models that take in a huge amount of data Google was already tracking about its data centers including how much energy is being used at any given time by servers and other equipment, outside air temperature and more. Computers then crunch all this data, analyzing the interplay that may be impossible for a human mind to grasp, and predicting Power Usage Effectiveness, or how to use available power most efficiently for maximum computing return.
The model means that where once Google had to shut down entire server banks in order to perform service or for other reasons, it can now temporarily tweak another variable like cooling in order to maintain a much higher general level of output, saving time, energy and money.
Sourse: http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/28/how-google-uses-machine-learning-and-neural-networks-to-optimize-data-centers/

How Google Uses Machine Learning And Neural Networks To Optimize Data Centers | TechCrunch Google has released some new research about it efforts to maximize performance and minimize energy use at data centers through machine learning today. Long..

The campaign has raised more than $1.5 million as of publication of this post, well over the million-dollar goal. More than 38,000 people have contributed to that total.

At the expense of being labeled a crotchety old man (at the ripe old age of 36), let me state here for the record that I think this project is a bunch of smoke and mirrors and will fail hard. The Solar Roadways project has been kicking around since 2006 and has been collecting thoughtful detractors all the way (while failing to raise any kind of meaningful investment capital to implement their plans). Treehugger’s Lloyd Alter was pointing out the project’s flaws way back in 2009 and Jeremy Elton Jacquot did it even earlier than that in 2007. Lloyd’s post has a bunch of links to other writers’ takedowns of the concept.



The main arguments against Solar Roadways boil down to:

• The panels would cost too much both as a solar panel and as a road surface.
• They won’t produce enough energy relative to conventional solar panels.
• There is no shortage of space to mount solar panels, so no need to embed them in the road.
• They are a maintenance nightmare compared to conventional road surfaces.

In short, they are a (bad) solution in search of a problem. Even if they could do everything they purport to do, there is no need for them.

I think it’s unfortunate that thousands of people are throwing good money after this bad project, and I want to help shed a little light on the situation. In that spirit, I decided to run through the "Solar FREAKIN’ Roadways!" video second-by-second with some commentary.

Read more: http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/energy/blogs/solar-roadways-dont-believe-the-hype-on-this-boondoggle-of-a-project