Today on Engineering Newswire: Turning seawater into fuel; making disposable drones; and taking a look at a bionic kangaroo.
Hopping on Energy Efficiency: Festo has developed the BionicKangaroo that combines pneumatic and electrical drive technology to produce a highly dynamic system, which realistically emulates the jumping behavior of real kangaroos. The robotic kangaroo weighs 15 pounds and stands about 3 feet high. It can jump 1 foot vertically and about 2 feet horizontally.
Naval Gas from Seawater: Researchers at the Materials Science and Technology division of the US Naval Research Lab have demonstrated a new conversion method that can turn seawater into fuel for naval ships. After researchers extract carbon dioxide and hydrogen gas from seawater, the gasses are converted to fuel via a gas-to-liquids process using catalytic converters.
Disposable Drones Printed for Cheap Spying: At the University of Sheffield, engineers are 3D printing unmanned aircraft. The thought is that production costs could be low enough that this would lead to disposable UAVs to be sent on one-way flights for delivery, search, or reconnaissance purposes.
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