Show Notes 17 February 2023
Story 1: Amazon’s Zoox is now operating its purpose-built autonomous taxi on public roads
Source: Engadget.com Story by Steve Dent
See video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tknowptOgU4
- This month Amazon-owned Zoox has started offering driverless robotaxi rides in California after receiving a testing permit from the Department of Motor Vehicles.
- Unlike the autonomous vehicles from Cruise and Waymo, Zoox’s vehicles are purpose built for driverless taxi rides, so they have no steering wheel or pedals.
- According to the press release: On February 11th, shortly after receiving the permit, Zoox conducted the “first run of its employee shuttle service in Foster City, California, marking the first time in history a purpose-built autonomous robotaxi without traditional driving controls carried passengers on open public roads.”
- To get to that point, the company completed what it called “rigorous” testing with the vehicles on private roads.
- It also ran its L3 test fleet (hybrid Toyota Highlanders with safety drivers) over a million autonomous miles on data-gathering missions in San Francisco, Las Vegas and Seattle.
- Zoox has been developing its unique vehicles since it launched nine years ago, and was acquired by Amazon in a $1.2 billion merger in the summer of 2020.
- Its robotaxis, introduced later that year, are relatively tiny at 3.63 meters (11.9 feet) long, have passenger bench seats that face each other, four-wheel steering and can drive in either direction.
- That makes them highly maneuverable, but they can also travel at speeds up to 75 MPH and run 16 hours on a charge thanks to the immense 133kWh battery packs.
Story 2: Blue Origin Develops System to Deploy ‘Unlimited’ Solar Power on the Moon
Source: ExtremeTech.com Story by Ryan Whitwam
- Blue Origin, the aerospace firm founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, has thus far focused on its New Shepard sub-orbital rocket.
- However, it has bigger plans, including a commercial space station and a newly unveiled solar panel manufacturing system called Blue Alchemist.
- The company recently announced its technology can cheaply and safely produce solar panels using only lunar regolith, bringing essentially unlimited electricity to the moon.
- Since 2021, Blue Origin claims it has been manufacturing solar panels using simulated lunar regolith and has demonstrated every step of the process.
- It starts with the simulated regolith, which Blue Origin manufactures to be chemically and mineralogically identical to what you’d find on the moon.
- Blue Alchemist uses a contactless process to melt the regolith, reaching temperatures more than 2,900 degrees Fahrenheit (1,600 degrees Celsius).
- With the raw materials molten, the reactor uses a process called molten regolith electrolysis to separate out iron, silicon, and aluminum.
- Producing high-quality solar panels requires unadulterated silicon, and Blue Origin says its process reaches more than 99.999% purity.
- Blue Alchemist makes everything you need to deploy new solar panels, including cover glass that protects the panels from harsh lunar conditions and transmission wires.
- Engineers at the company believe the Blue Alchemist panels will have a service life of about 10 years. Even if they don’t last that long, you can make more of them — Blue Origin says this technology can “scale indefinitely.”
Story 3: Ingestible sensor could help doctors pinpoint gastrointestinal difficulties
Source: MIT News Story by Anne Trafton
Link: https://news.mit.edu/2023/ingestible-sensor-could-help-doctors-pinpoint-gi-difficulties-0213
- Gastrointestinal motility disorders, which affect about 35 million Americans, can occur in any part of the digestive tract, resulting in failure of food to move through the tract.
- They are usually diagnosed using nuclear imaging studies or X-rays, or by inserting catheters containing pressure transducers that sense contractions of the gastrointestinal tract.
- The MIT and Caltech researchers wanted to come up with an alternative that would be less invasive and could be done at the patient’s home.
- Their idea was to develop a capsule that could be swallowed and then send out a signal revealing where it was in the gastrointestinal tract, allowing doctors to determine what part of the tract was causing a slowdown and better determine how to treat the patient’s condition.
- Recently Engineers at MIT and Caltech announced that they have demonstrated an ingestible sensor whose location can be monitored as it moves through the digestive tract, an advance that could help doctors more easily diagnose gastrointestinal motility disorders such as constipation, gastroesophageal reflux disease, and gastroparesis.
- The tiny sensor works by taking advantage of the fact that the field produced by an electromagnetic coil becomes weaker, in a predictable way, as the distance from the coil increases. The magnetic sensor they developed, which is small enough to fit in an ingestible capsule, measures the surrounding magnetic field and uses that information to calculate its distance from a coil located outside the body.
- In the new study, the researchers showed that they could use this technology to track the sensor as it moved through the digestive tract of large animals. Such a device could offer an alternative to more invasive procedures, such as endoscopy, that are currently used to diagnose motility disorders.
Story 4: Where to learn about 34 highly influential African American scientists
Source: InterestingEngineering.com Story by Christopher McFadden
Link: https://interestingengineering.com/culture/31-highly-influential-african-american-scientists
- In honor of Black History Month, I wanted to highlight a fascinating article showcasing 34 significant African American scientists.
- Here’s just one example, and someone whose technology most of us use every day!
- I’m talking about Dr. James Edward Maceo West, who is an expert in physics, electronics, and acoustics.
- Dr. West is best known for his work in developing the electroacoustic transducer.
- This compact device is currently found in around 90 percent of modern microphones, most telephones, and other devices such as hearing aids.
- West studied physics at Temple University, graduating in 1957, and was hired for a full-time position as an acoustical scientist by Bell, where he developed the transducer.
- West was later appointed president-elect of the Acoustical Society of America, and later joined the National Academy of Engineering in 1998.
- For his contributions to STEM, he was also inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1999.