Top Stories

AeroVironment, the California-based company behind the largest, highest and longest flying unmanned aircraft system (UAS), the Global Observer, has now achieved a remarkable technical milestone with a much smaller aircraft. With its "Nano Hummingbird" the company has for the first time achieved controlled precision hovering and fast-forward flight of a two-wing, flapping wing aircraft that carries its own energy source and relies only on its flapping wings for propulsion and control.  Read More

Rolls-Royce, one of the most enduring brands of automotive excellence, is developing a fully electric Phantom. The 102EX experimental vehicle will be shown in Geneva on March 1, and will tour Europe, the Middle East, Asia and North America this year to evaluate the opinions of its key stakeholders. The brand is launching a special web site which will be used to deliver information about the vehicle, the tour and to elicit stakeholder response.  Read More

Solar cells are the most expensive part of a solar panel, so it would follow that if panels could produce the same amount of electricity with less cells, then their prices would come down. In order for panels to be able to do so using existing cell technology, however, they would need to get more light to the fewer cells that they still had. Mounting the panels on the end of vertical poles to get them closer to the sun is one possible approach, that might work in the town of Bedrock or on Gilligan’s Island. A better idea, though, is to apply a clear layer of solar concentrators to the surface of a panel – and that’s just what HyperSolar intends to do.  Read More

Situated as they are, high above the surface of the Earth, satellites are pretty much left to fend for themselves – if a piece of space junk is drifting towards one, for instance, no one is going to be there to push it out of the way. To address this type of situation, engineers from the University of Southampton have developed what they say is the world’s first control system for programing satellites to think for themselves. It’s a cognitive software agent called sysbrain, and it allows satellites to read English-language technical documents, which in turn instruct the satellites on how to do things such as autonomously identifying and avoiding obstacles.  Read More

The Geneva Motor Show constantly tosses up innovative automotive concepts and this year’s event is shaping-up to be no different. One example which we are certainly looking forward to seeing in the flesh is Rinspeed's retro take on the modern EV – the Rinspeed BamBoo. The company has released more pics and details ahead of the debut, so lets take a closer look at what's in store.  Read More

While electric commuting bikes are currently experiencing a surge in popularity, electric mountain bikes such as the Conway E-Rider and the KTM eGnition are also showing up on tradeshow floors with increasing frequency. Most of these are designed as cross-country and/or trail bikes, with the idea that the motor can extend their range above the reaches of pure human power – of course, they might also appeal to couch potatoes who want all the fun of mountain biking, with a minimum of the exercise. The EGO-Kit, however, is an electric motor that can be added onto an existing downhill mountain bike, with the specific purpose of replacing a chair lift for getting bike and rider to the top of the mountain.  Read More

You may not have heard of Chinese mobile phone maker Umeox Mobile, but odds are you’ve come across one of their handsets at one time or another without realizing it, as its phones are generally re-branded and sold by operators around the world. The company's latest offering announced this week at Mobile World Congress 2011 is due to hit stores later this year. Named after the Greek god of the sun, the Umeox Apollo sports a built-in solar panel on the back for keeping the phone running when you can’t get to an outlet – provided you can get to some sunlight, of course.  Read More

A television host and an engineer from Germany have completed an almost 5,000 km (3,107 mile) journey across Australia in their Wind Explorer, a lightweight electric vehicle powered by the wind – not only through electricity-generating wind turbines but also using kites. The pioneering 18-day trip by Dirk Gion and Stefan Simmerer set three world records – the first time a continent has been crossed be a wind-powered vehicle, the longest overall distance covered by an exclusively wind-powered land vehicle, and the longest distance covered by such a vehicle in 36 hours.  Read More

Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) have attracted a lot of attention as a result of their use in Iraq and Afghanistan, but IEDs are used by guerillas and terrorist groups in many parts of the world, including Colombia. Being sensitive to the problem of IEDs, two Colombian doctoral students from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) set about looking for a way to explode such devices at a distance. In collaboration with two Colombian Universities the EPFL students developed a device that can explode IEDs remotely by using energy from their electromagnetic impulses.  Read More