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worldmags<br />
SOLAR FLAIR<br />
At the recent CEATEC 2010 in Japan, Nissan used the<br />
opportunity to show off its latest EPORO in its demo of their<br />
39 ft tall solar tree — a charger that generates 20 kW of power.<br />
The robotic car is rigged with a wireless power system <strong>and</strong> can<br />
recharge itself on the tree, as well as charging lanes on the road.<br />
Don't get too excited, though. Nissan is targeting 2030 as the year<br />
the system becomes commonplace.<br />
Solar trees can be used individually as small-scale charging<br />
stations in urban areas or they can be grouped into forests to<br />
produce energy on the scale of power plants.According to<br />
Nissan's design, a forest of 1,000 solar trees will be able to<br />
provide electricity for 7,000 households.<br />
In addition to providing power, solar trees can provide some<br />
relief from the heat in summer.The translucent solar panels offer<br />
protection from UV light, while fine mist emitted from the edges<br />
of the panels works to reduce the temperature in the immediate<br />
vicinity.<br />
IT’S A BIRD! IT’S A PLANE! NO, IT’S A ...<br />
This is an honest to goodness, real, working, commercially-available<br />
jetpack. Don’t get too excited here either.Yep.The Martin Jetpack is<br />
now robotic <strong>and</strong> has no use for humans. Damn, that one piece of the<br />
future that would have been totally awesome has just passed us by.<br />
Martin Aircraft Company has actually been working on a practical jetpack for years now.The lowdown is that the jetpack<br />
uses two huge ducted fans that you wear kinda like a backpack <strong>and</strong> it will propel you 8,000 feet up at 60 miles an hour for<br />
30 minutes. It runs on the same gas your car does, doesn’t require a pilot’s license, <strong>and</strong> includes a ballistic parachute (that<br />
works at low altitudes) — just in case.<br />
From the beginning, Martin had autonomy in mind for their jetpack for one simple reason: Nobody really wanted to be the<br />
first guy who had to strap it on <strong>and</strong> see how fast it would go, or who had to check if the emergency parachute system worked.<br />
So, it was a natural step to turn the robotic testing system into a totally robotic flying system. Martin is hoping that their<br />
‘Skyhook’ will be able to fill a niche between man-portable reconnaissance UAVs <strong>and</strong> larger, infrastructure-dependent drones<br />
like Predators. Skyhook can take off <strong>and</strong> l<strong>and</strong> vertically while carrying up to 100 kilos of payload which would be ideal for local<br />
resupplying of isolated units.<br />
SERVO 12.2010 25<br />
worldmags
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