Shweeb Monorail
Photograph courtesy Shweeb Monorail Technology
In the late 1800s, a short-lived experimental transportation system in southern New Jersey took contraptions that looked like upside-down bicycles and mounted them on 1.8 miles (2.9 kilometers) of rail for a smoother, faster ride than one could expect on bicycles of the day. More recently, the idea of a pedal-powered monorail has been revived and updated at a Rotorua, New Zealand, amusement park by a company named Shweeb.
Google invested $1 million in September 2010 to support further development of the system for an urban environment. Similar to the bicycle railways of centuries past, the Shweeb system is meant to reduce rolling resistance, "by running hard wheels on hard rail," according to the Shweeb website. But the Shweeb concept goes way beyond that. The design also seeks to cut wind resistance by positioning pedaling passengers in bullet-shaped hanging "pods" with their feet forward, as on a recumbent bicycle. The pods hang from 8-inch-wide (20-centimeter-wide) rails constructed 19 feet (5.8 meters) above street-level pedestrians and traffic.
Worried about passing? No need, says the Shweeb team--tailgating can actually help both riders travel faster. That's because a solo pod would have a high-pressure zone, or headwind in front, and a low-pressure zone, or vacuum behind. But when one pod sidles up behind another, it eliminates the vacuum for the lead pod and the headwind for the trailing pod. In short, resistance is cut by half. The company's website promises, "Just as tandem bicycles always travel faster than two single bicycles, two Shweebs travelling in a train always travel faster than either of them could travelling solo." Don't just take it from Shweeb, though. Consider the NASCAR technique known as "two-car bump drafting," in which racers link front and rear bumpers to effectively drive as one car with two engines.
According to Peter Cossey, managing director of Shweeb Holdings, the company is hard at work on the Google-backed R&D project and hopes "to have something out" in late 2012, although with ambition to build an accessible, green, cost-competitive, and fun transit solution, he wrote in an email, there remains "a lot on the to-do list."
(Related: "Guangzhou Wins Sustainable Transport Prize")
(Related: "Guangzhou Wins Sustainable Transport Prize")
Self-Driving Car
Illustration courtesy Mike and Maaike
Take all the autonomy and privacy of personal vehicles, subtract the human propensity for distraction, and add a virtual chauffeur. What do you have? Autonomous cars that, in theory, can help commuters de-stress and allow freeways to flow more smoothly. That's the idea, anyway, behind driverless cars, which are gaining increasing attention from automakers and high-tech companies alike.
Demonstration models that Google, BMW, Volvo, General Motors, Stanford University, and others have built for testing look like modified regular cars (which they usually are -- computing gear can fit in the trunk). But designers have come up with more futuristic concepts, like the one pictured here from San Francisco industrial design shop Mike & Maaike. Dubbed Atnmbl ("autonomobile," derived from autonomy and automobile), the seven-seat design does away with the steering wheel, brake pedal, and driver's seat. It's envisioned as an electric- and solar-powered model for the year 2040.
(Related: "Drexel Students Take On Solar Car Challenge")
But autonomous vehicle technology is being tested on some public roadways today, and General Motors executive Alan Taub said recently that vehicles capable of partially driving themselves could become available before the end of this decade.
"You think that driving a car is hard, but it's not actually that hard for a computer . . . if the computer actually has good data about what's around it," Google co-founder Larry Page said in a talk at the search giant's Zeitgeist Americas event this fall. "I think they'll work substantially better than an average person, and get better from there. You'll get a software update and your car will be safer."
(Related: "Pictures--Cool Cars Designed by Students to Sip Fuel")
(Related: "Pictures--Cool Cars Designed by Students to Sip Fuel")
Published November 23, 2011
Gossamer Albatross
Photograph from Corbis
Who needs jet fuel when you have a pair of powerful legs? That's the maxim demonstrated by a long line of engineers and athletic pilots who have pushed the limits of human-powered transportation by land, air, and sea. Pictured here is the Gossamer Albatross, which in 1979 became the first human-powered aircraft to cross the English Channel.
Sponsored by DuPont, inventor Paul MacCready built the lightweight craft from carbon fiber tubing, balsa wood, clear Mylar, and Kevlar, with the addition of some wire and foam. He engineered a series of human- and solar-powered aircraft between 1959 and 1980, and in 1971 he founded AeroVironment-a company today known for its unmanned aircraft systems and charging equipment for electric cars.
The 22.5-mile (36.2 kilometer) Albatross flight lasted just under three hours--about an hour longer than anticipated. And Bryan Allen, the long-distance cyclist who powered the 70-pound Albatross through that grueling journey over water despite leg cramps and dehydration, later told AeroVironment, "There were so many unknowns on that flight that I could not be certain we'd make it, but I was certain I'd use every resource in trying."
Published November 23, 2011
Leonardo da Vinci’s Helicopter
Photograph by Valentina Petrova, AP
A scale model of Leonardo da Vinci's aerial screw, pictured here in an exhibit at the Sofia City Art Gallery in Bulgaria, gives visitors a glimpse of one of the inventors' most famous schemes for a flying machine. Sketched in 1493, the design called for a spiral-shaped, rotating surface made from iron wire and linen made "airtight with starch," and powered by a human passenger, according to the U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission report on early helicopter technology.
The screw, also known a the "air gyroscope," is credited as the first rotary-wing aircraft concept, but Leonardo's design would have been a flightless bird. According to the Centennial of Flight Commission, muscle power "would never have been sufficient to operate a helicopter successfully . . . there was no way to deal with the torque created by the propeller."
Published November 23, 2011
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