ISR's NS2 Hub Centre Steering Kit Via: FF Web 

The mobilizing of Marconi radio circa 1928. Via: Radio Marconi

Naked under plastic: peeking under the skin of the Hyabusa

As part of the Autodesk University Augmented Reality main stage demo, CTO Jeff Kowalski plucks a motorcycle from his computer screen and holds it in his hand.

"The Motor Simulation improves safety for motorcycle riders. It’s cutting-edge technology and the experience of it’s management team has designed and build a fully-interactive, high-definition graphics simulator with a fully movable, reactive motion base that simulates riding a motorcycle in real-time, base upon the parameters of physics and not a gaming engine."

Training day.

Via: Deadlicious

The Human Factor.

Determining Motorcycle Ergonomics. Via: The University of Nottingham

Its a dirty job but someone...

Via: Channel 23 bakersfield

"INDIANAPOLIS -- A new business near the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is hoping to lure in motorcycle enthusiasts in town for this weekend's MotoGP race with the promise of an automated bike wash like no other.

The creators, created Motowash and working with Indianapolis-based Harrell's Car Wash Systems, said the concept was a simple, yet challenging feat that took them two years and dozens of prototypes to perfect.

"How to hold it upright obviously was a challenge. That was what all of our guys spent the most time on, how to hold the bike upright, securely. Then we started working in to a clean bike," said company vice president Chad Tearman.

Instead of taking one or two hours to wash a motorcycle by hand, the state-of-the-art system can wash and dry a bike in just five minutes, Tearman said.

That's good news for Speedway Police officer Rod Ferguson, who said he likes having the convenience of an automated bike wash where he patrols.

"They have a system where both tires rotate. They can clean all of the spokes in the wheels, and in just minutes, instead of having to take a lot of time to go down through with a sponge than having and all that," he said.

Tearman and his team are awaiting a patent on the system. After that, they hope to take their idea nationwide."

Motorcycles Designed to Run on Air.

By Jessica Marshall via Discovery News

Aug. 14, 2008 -- We may be driving on air in the next few years. That is, we may be driving vehicles powered by compressed air, instead of gasoline or diesel fuel.

Researchers Yu-Ta Shen and Yean-Ren Hwang of the National Central University in Taiwan have developed an air-powered motorcycle, which uses the energy in compressed air, rather than gas, to drive the motor.

"In Taiwan, air pollution is a very serious problem in the city," Hwang said. Twenty percent of all air pollution comes from motorcycles, he added, especially carbon monoxide and unburned hydrocarbons. These emissions are worse from motorcycles and scooters than cars.
Since the only thing coming out of the new motorcycle's tailpipe is air, large-scale adoption of the new technology could take a big bite out of air pollution in Taiwan, where motorcycles are the most popular form of transportation, or in other places where motorcycles represent a large proportion of traffic.

The motorcycle would still require energy to compress the air needed to power the engine. The amount of pollution associated with that energy will depend on what kind of a power plant provides electricity to the area in question.

The current prototype can hold a little more than two and a half gallons of compressed air, which would carry the bike and driver about three-quarters of a mile.

In the future, the tank size will be increased three to four times, and the maximum pressure the tank can hold will be increased so that the motorcycle could go almost 20 miles without a refill, Hwang said, "which would be adequate for usage in the city. We would need an air compressor to refuel, most likely at a fueling station."

They published their work in the journal Applied Energy.
Other air-powered vehicle experts are not convinced that a motorcycle is the best use of the technology.

"We don't think it's a viable product because you're talking about a very, very limited amount of compressed air you can put on a bike," said Shiva Vencat, Executive Vice President of MDI, Inc. in Newport, N.Y., and CEO of Zero Pollution Motors, who has licensed MDI's air vehicle technology.

"We have a vehicle that will address that market, but it's not a motorcycle," Vencat added. He can't release more information about that yet, but it will be a smaller vehicle that would fill a similar niche in countries like Taiwan where motorcycles are prevalent.

Zero Pollution Motors plans to bring a six-seater air-powered car to the U.S. market after competing in the Automotive X Prize race in September 2009. The X Prize offers $10 million prize to a marketable vehicle that exceeds a fuel economy of 100 miles per gallon.

The ZPM car runs on compressed air only when traveling under 35 miles per hour. At higher speeds, the car burns fuel to warm up the air, expanding it and allowing the vehicle to travel on less air per mile. Some of the expanded air also goes back to the air tank, recharging the compressed air supply.

This system can operate at more than 100 miles per gallon, Vencat said. With an eight- or 10-gallon fuel tank, the cars should have a range of 800-1,000 miles.

The motor can also be plugged in and operated as a compressor to refill the air tank.
Vencat expects that fueling stations will arise as the car gains popularity.

"The good thing is you could put a compressed air station on campuses, in malls," he said. "You don't have the security situation that you do with gasoline."

ZPM plans to start a plant to manufacture the cars by late 2010 or early 2011.

Robo3's rideable robot scooter.

Via newscientist

"Just imagine galloping through the town atop this ridable robot called R7. It was developed by Korean company Robo3, which makes several other robotic contraptions including a robot bar-tender and a dinosaur. The R7 will set you back a cool $5,250. But that seems very reasonable considering the respect you'll get while trotting down the road."

External link Robo3

Geek scooter-The Mobile communications hub.

Brilliant minds have found a way to make a scooter both geeky and nerdy,..we live in amazing times.

Via Make,

"A year ago we had the opportunity to produce a promotional product for one of our clients using a new vino scooter and some geek know-how. The end result was a rolling system capable of long distance war driving, GPS navigation, Pir8 Radio Station, Skype calls on the road as well as recording your favorite TV program so you don't miss Lost because you are lost.

All that plus an antennae beefy enough to hit a home run with!"

Direct link: Thoughtlab

The trafffic Light of the future.

Via Grinding

"Hanyoung Lee’s clever “virtual wall” traffic light concept provides a visually strong barrier that would hopefully prevent motorists from blocking the box. And if the visual barrier isn’t incentive enough, perhaps they could up the wattage of the lasers…."

NVIDIA Motorcycle Casemod.

Via Gizmodo:

"There are roadwarriors with their ultraportables and then there's master modder Dennis Ilyin, who took computing on the go literally with this ambitious motorcycle casemod. While the two-wheeled computing wonder lacks an engine, it more than makes up for it with massive LED-lit water tanks and what's sure to be ample processing power. The compu-bike was part of an NVIDIA-sponsored modding contest"

The Cone-head helmet.

Don Morgan shows his cones to TV host James O'Loghlin

Via the brisbane times:

"Visiting fatal accident scenes involving motorcycles and bicycles helped a Brisbane physicist develop a revolutionary helmet that has the potential to reduce brain injury or death.

The invention, known as Cone-Head, took out the Invention of the Year award last night on Brisbane's ABC TV's The New Inventors. Don Morgan, from Yeronga, said he was "greatly honoured" to win the top prize for an invention he has been working on since the mid-1980s.

The unique helmet has a cone-shaped lining that allows greater absorption of the impact in an accident. "It's in five segments, and the reason for that is to take into account the different strengths or thicknesses of the skull," Mr Morgan said.

"For example, softer foam needs to be around vital areas of the skull like the temple region, and the outer layer adds strength to the helmet liner itself."The 59-year-old inventor said the idea was first spawned after he participated in a research project on road safety more than 20 years ago.

"We looked at helmet design, tested different helmets, carried out crash simulations and even tested cadavers with helmets on. "I would go out with the traffic accident investigation squad to fatal or serious motorcycle and bicycle accidents to understand the force involved and hopefully retrieve the helmet.

"I would then take the helmet back to the laboratory, pull it apart and look for damage that could relate back to the injury sustained." It became clear to Mr Morgan that the standard foam liner in helmets was too hard and did not effectively absorb the force of an impact.

His interest in helmets continued long after the research project wrapped up, and during the 1990s his interest in foam liners was piqued again."My daughter was riding a bicycle and when I picked up her helmet and pushed my thumb against it, I was amazed at the hardness of it.

"I started to wonder how I could soften the liner."

After pondering different types of foam strips and utilising shapes from cylinders to square-based pyramids, Mr Morgan eventually decided on a cone-shaped lining. Independent testing of the Cone-Head liner in New Zealand compared Mr Morgan's design with standard helmet liners.

"The results showed that the foam samples we tested with cones in them were far superior to the single density harm foam. "I thought it would be all downhill from there, with all of this wonderful scientific data, but I found it very difficult to find an Australian manufacturer.

Following countless knock-backs from manufacturers and funding bodies, Mr Morgan considered walking away from the project.

However his wife encouraged him to try his luck overseas, and a helmet manufacturer was astounded with his invention.

"I signed a license agreement three years ago, so the helmet will be manufactured overseas and imported. "At the moment we're in the process of certification and I'd say by probably March or April next year we'll start producing them."

The E-tuk-tuk.

The little taxi that could-The tuk-tuk

By Indrajit Basu, Via: The Sri Lanka Daily news:

"On the streets of South Asia, the tuk-tuk, known for the peculiar sound of its engine - basically a three-wheeled motorcycle modified to carry passengers - is a familiar sight. Its popularity stems from the fact that it is almost as affordable as a two-wheeler and it can squeeze into the smallest of lanes and travel over the bumpiest of roads.

But up in the hilly region of Kothmale in central Sri Lanka, this humble vehicle has evolved into something much more than just a mode of cheap transport. It has become a full-fledged mobile telecenter, literally taking the concept of Community Multimedia Centre (CMC) to community doorsteps and empowering its people to bring about change and improvements.

In fact, so innovative is this concept that it even won the Stockholm Challenge award in December - under the Public Administration category - as a project that not only tops the list of ICT (Information Communication Technology) initiatives supporting development, but also for taking ICT to communities that have been marginalized by remoteness, lack of infrastructural facilities and poverty.



With a laptop, battery-operated printer, camera, telephone, recorder and scanner, and with Internet provided via a CDMA-enabled wireless connection, a small radio broadcasting set that can narrowcast content through the CDMA-internet connection, and everything powered by a 1000 W generator, a dozen-odd Tuktuks (called e-Tuk-tuks) roam the 20 odd villages in the 30 kilometres radius of Kothmale everyday to extend the services of a traditional telecenter and radio station.

The e-Tuk-tuks roam these villages with three basic objectives. The most important is encouragement of broader community participation in the activities of an existing community, followed by increasing access and awareness of ICTs, and providing training and support for the delivery and creation of relevant localized content.

"But above all," says Benjamin Grubb, its project coordinator, "by taking access (to ICT) directly to villages and presenting it to users in a familiar environment, e-Tuk-tuk is making technology less daunting."

In its true sense then, this project is just an extension of the good old Community Multimedia Centre and Radio Station. In simple terms, by making the equipment mobile, it facilitates first mile access to remote communities. So what's the big deal? After all, isn't it being done all over the world in some form or other?

The difference really lies in the circumstances under which this concept operates. Its novelty lies not in making a telecenter or a radio station mobile, but rather in the fact that it is bridging a digital divide caused, to some extent, by the lack of infrastructure, even transportation, and poverty.

"In most parts of Sri Lanka, mobility is almost always limited due to the high cost of public transport, irregular services and associated time involved in travel," says Ben. "Access is also restricted due to communal reasons factors such as caste, gender and ethnicity."

The e-Tuk-tuk is also bridging the communal divides by increasing community participation and inculcating a sense of common cause, he adds.

According to its project managers, the telecenter and radio is not unknown in the Kothmale region, which had both ever since 1989. However, since they were owned by the Government and were priority focused, both of these tools were lying in a "state of neglect."

By taking the radio station to the doorsteps, e-Tuktuk then has bought renewed vitality to the radio and telecenter in the region. Compared to the government-owned radio, the e-Tuk-tuk has also brought in far more creative reporting formats that incorporate a variety of media beyond basic radio programming, claims its operators.

As well, the scope of community participation has also increased as the vehicle ventures out to more and more villages where it facilitates workshops, training programs and cultural events. For instance, most of the 20 villages it serves do not have electricity, something that makes evenings absolutely unproductive for its residents.

Some of the e-Tuk-tuk's, that are specially equipped to carry portable projection sets, screen educational content in the evenings and "since the villagers have nothing better to do in the dark, it ensures a high level of participation and dissemination of information," says Ben.

According to Stockholm Challenge, "the project places an emphasis on appropriate technology that is both affordable and sustainable in a local context." Indeed, run and operated by the a voluntary organisation called Internet Listeners Club, e-Tuk-tuk, conceived in early 2006 required about US $20000 to set up.

The daily running costs, which is just about $200 a day is borne by a local charity called the MJM Charitable Foundation, while many local companies "lend various forms of support in kind," says Ben.


Even as its benefits unfold and its full potential realized, what is clear is that e-Tuk-tuk has already started making a difference for many Kothmale residents. "All through my life, I have always been a shy person," says the 28-year old Prabha Kottegoda, one of the radio jockeys in e-Tuk-tuk.

"I could hardly speak a word with a stranger. But ever since I became a radio jockey my life has hanged for good and I see it full of possibilities. Interacting with people and making programs have changed me as a person. I can talk to anyone now."

This is why Ben believes that the concept of e-Tuk-tuk should not be contained. "Its time has come and it should be replicated," he says. Yet another similar project is under trial in an underdeveloped and remote district in Jharkhand, India.

Meanwhile, the Hambantota project aims to familiarize school children in the remote areas with the use of IT and simple broadcast equipment. Here, the auto-rickshaw is sent from school to school with an instructor and is supported by a local initiative called Plan Sri Lanka.

"All these projects are in trial stages but could be scaled-up to the size of e-Tuk-tuk", says Ben. "The e-Tuk-tuk serves about two hundred thousand people directly and about a hundred thousand indirectly. But soon the concept could serve millions."

Re-inventing the wheel...

A very clever man with a very clever wheel-Duncan Fitzsimmons.

From Gizmodo Via Bike Radar:

"UK Designer Duncan Fitzsimmons has come up with a full-sized wheel that can be completely folded. Fitzsimmons' Crossbreed wheel doesn't have the poor-performance delivered by the tiny wheels on folding bikes and despite sounding pretty dangerous it actually works,

While the design is innovative, and avoids all the bumpy ride and gyroscopic effects of traditional small wheels, to get it to be as light and strong as possible it needs a carbon-fiber structure. This, says Fitzsimmons, is one of the difficulties ahead as he tries to find a manufacturing partner. His ultimate goal is to make a really "high end city bike or courier bike that can fold up into a package like a golf bag, which could go into an overhead rack on a train or go into a plane locker." With folding carbon-fiber wheels, don't expect it to be cheap, though.."

The electronic pony express.

By James Brooke from the NYtimes:

"In this village on the edge of a primordial forest, where the occasional oxcart creaks down the red earth main street, townspeople were debating one recent afternoon what to say in their first e-mail transmission.

''I think we should send a message to the governor, asking for land titles,'' said Kim Seng, 53, who owns a mud-floor restaurant, as his wife listened from a hammock. Conjuring up the power and prestige of a letter sent by computer, he added confidently, ''The governor will pay attention to our issues.''

Without wires for electricity or telephones, this village of about 800 people has nevertheless joined the online world, taking part in a development project set up by an American benefactor to connect 13 rural schools to the Internet.

Since the system went into place last September at the new elementary school here in Cambodia's remote northeast corner, solar panels have been powering three computers. Once a day, an Internet ''Motoman'' rides a cherry red Honda motorcycle slowly past the school. On the passenger seat is a gray metal box with a short fat antenna. The box holds a wireless Wi-Fi chip set that allows the exchange of e-mail between the box and computers. Briefly, this schoolyard of tree stumps and a hand-cranked water well becomes an Internet hot spot.

It is a digital pony express: five Motomen ride their routes five days a week, downloading and uploading e-mail. The system, developed by a Boston company, First Mile Solutions, uses a receiver box powered by the motorcycle's battery. The driver need only roll slowly past the school to download all the village's outgoing e-mail and deliver incoming e-mail. The school's computer system and antenna are powered by solar panels. Newly collected data is stored for the day in a computer strapped to the back of the motorcycle. At dusk, the motorcycles converge on the provincial capital, Ban Lung, where an advanced school is equipped with a satellite dish, allowing a bulk e-mail exchange with the outside world.

The Motoman program is sponsored by American Assistance for Cambodia, a group based in Phnom Penh and run by Bernard Krisher, the Far East representative of the Media Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Media Lab gives technical advice to the Motoman program, which offers third world schools a way to cut costs by sharing one dish and one uplink fee.

To some, the Motoman system is a cumbersome compromise, made necessary by a government that makes money through monopolies that inflate the prices of satellite dishes and uplink fees far beyond the means of villages like this one, where individual incomes average $1 a day.

''The 50 poorest countries in the world get more money from telephone access fees than anything else,'' said Nicholas Negroponte, a founding director of the Media Lab. An advocate of an Internet bridge to rural Asia, Mr. Negroponte spoke outside a computer-equipped, online school he and his wife, Elaine, pay for 120 miles west of here. Almost as he spoke -- in early January -- police were raiding Internet cafes in Phnom Penh, confiscating equipment for making Internet telephone calls. The cafes charged as little as 5 cents a minute to call the United States, far below the government-mandated minimum of 96 cents for phone calls using conventional technology.

In Phnom Penh, dozens of Internet cafes offer access for 50 cents an hour, and 20 stores sell used computers imported from Japan. About 1,000 Netizens a day log on to the Web site of King Norodom Sihanouk, www.norodomsihanouk.info. A used desktop computer can be bought for about $30 -- the monthly wage for a schoolteacher -- while used laptops can be had for as little as $50.

About 75 percent of Cambodia's 13 million people, though, live in rural areas, and smooth roads and utility lines usually stop at the edge of the provincial capital. The village of O Siengle, a collection of wooden houses on stilts, is emblematic of life for the millions of Asians who live on the unwired side of the digital divide.


From this village to Ban Lung, the capital of Ratanakiri Province, is only 18 miles. But even in the dry season, it is a jolting two-hour ride in a sturdy Russian-made jeep.

Users say the Motoman system is starting to change lives.

''It helps us with our diagnoses,'' Chanmarith Ly, deputy director of the provincial hospital in Ban Lung, said of the telemedicine project that allows him to send photographs of patients, X-rays, ultrasounds and electrocardiograms to specialists in Boston at Partners Telemedicine, a program of the Partners HealthCare System. Doctors from the staff of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School review the files and send diagnoses, all pro bono.

Joseph C. Kvedar, a Partners doctor who directs the Boston end of the telemedicine project, saw the value of the effort when he visited the eight doctors at the Ban Lung hospital in November.

''The Cambodian doctors know how to do malaria, tuberculosis, chronic tropical infection conditions like diarrhea, dengue fever,'' he said by telephone from Boston. ''But diabetes, hypertension, the diseases of the modern world, are just not in their lexicon. It is a perfect fit.''

Still, once-a-day e-mail service has its drawbacks. A few steps from Dr. Ly's hospital office, Kuy Sothy, a 21-year-old teacher, lay on a hospital bed, recovering from a severe bout of malaria.

''I sent the e-mail to the hospital,'' she said, resting on a woven rattan mat.

Bunthan Hun, the project's local technology director, interjected, ''We got the e-mail, but you got here first.'' Indeed, the same motorcycle that carried Miss Sothy to the hospital carried the Wi-Fi box with her e-mail message.

The Americans behind the project hope that e-mail will also bring economic benefits by connecting rural people and their products to wider markets.

In Rovieng, where Mr. Negroponte finances his school, women weavers sell their raw silk scarves and ties through www.villageleap.com, a Web site operated by Mr. Krisher's group. Once marginalized, these traditional weavers now have among the town's highest incomes. Here in Ratanakiri, a land-locked province bordering southern Laos and the central highlands of Vietnam, Mr. Krisher hopes to market local products eventually through an informational Web site he maintains, www.ratanakiri.com.

For the younger generation, the new school computers are like magnets. While the shelf of donated books gathered dust, the computers gathered knots of students, dressed in blue and white uniforms.

''I very much want to go to high school, but I don't know if I can because we are poor,'' said Chenda Prom, 15 years old. Studying the keyboard, she added, ''I want to learn computers for my future.''

Murata Boy.

From Swik.net

"MURATA BOY is a self balancing robot that is packed with electronics to allow it to have extraordinary balancing capabilities. The specs are impressive especially considering the small size of the unit however watch the videos, they are something else!

The little guy does not fall down, even when he comes to a complete stop. And, it’s not training wheels keeping him up, but a gyro sensor located underneath his seat that detects tiny movements to calculate the slanting angle of the body. Once the angle is figured out, a large rotating disc in the robot’s chest generates force to correct the slant"

Perhaps in a few years this little robot will lead us the way to production motorcycles with built in gyro's -allowing for safer and (more importantly) faster machines.

The other Ghost Rider, Pt2.

"Norman, as always, drove like a maniac. Norman was young. He had never ridden any motorized device that lacked onboard steering and balance systems. He rode the bike with an intense lack of physical grace, as if trying to do algebra with his legs.

...they buzzed up along the road shoulder, the smart bike and sidecar scrunching over the oyster shells with oozy cybernetic ease.

From Distraction, by Bruce Sterling.

The Ghostrider robot is built by the "blue team" (composed of graduate and undergradute students from UC Berkeley as well as faculty and graduate students from Texas A&M.) for the Darpa Robotic Vehicle challenge.

This "Grand Challenge" is intended to accelerate the development of autonomous vehicle technologies. DARPA and other US agencies are already funding numerous developments in the robotics vehicle domain. This specific endeavor, however, is targeted to find smart solutions that are to be tested in a realistic scenario under challenging race conditions - something that has never been done before on this scale.

In July 2002, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced that it would award a cash prize of $1 Million to the team that builds an autonomous robotic ground vehicle that will successfully win a race from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.

On March 13, 2004, the Grand Challenge took place with no vehicles completing more than 8 miles autonomously before being disqualified. Nevertheless, the event successfully created a community of engineers, garage enthousihast and students who together took the first steps in private autonomous vehicle development.

There was no winner March 13, 2004. So, DARPA decided to hold a new Grand Challenge on October 8th, 2005 with a $2 million prize.

The Ghost Rider contains thirty two (32) seperate electronic components. Beyond DGPS, we are using only high speed camera as sensor input. The are two types of cameras used onboard. First, a pair of high resolution 1600x1200 ethernet cameras manufactured by Cognex used for creating realtime 3D scene of the obstacles in front of the vehicle. Second a single CCD, high speed (40 Hz), color camera is used for road detection.

Here is the Component Diagram with all connections and logic paths....