Today's Engineering Newswire looks at untethering the all new Atlas Robot, Fighting global warming, and ... doing the laundry?
World’s Smallest Washing Device
Swiss engineering lab MPI Ultrasonics has developed the Dolfi. The device resembles a bar of soap and makes hand-washing a hands-free chore. According to the developers, the Dolfi is the “world’s smallest and gentlest washing device,” and it uses 80% less energy than standard washing machines.
So how exactly does this device work? The developers placed a small transducer inside the device’s plastic outer casing. This produces modulated ultrasonic waves on a series of wavelengths that produces microscopic bubbles in the water through cavitation. After the bubbles implode, they produce small shock waves that remove dirt from the clothes’ fibers.
NISTAR Fights Global Warming
This is NISTAR, an instrument set to fly aboard the weather-observing spacecraft called the Deep Space Climate Observatory or DSCOVR. It's intent? To measure the Earth's radiation budget.
One of two Earth science instruments aboard DSCOVR, the National Institute of Standards and Technology Advanced Radiometer, or NIST, measures the absolute irradiance over a broad spectrum of the entire sunlit face of Earth. That will tell the instrument Earth's radiation budget, or if the Earth's atmosphere is retaining more or less solar energy than it radiates back to space.
Upgraded Atlas Robot Goes Wireless
DARPA has revealed a new and improved Atlas robot. With 75% of the robot rebuilt, it was quite the makeover. In fact, only the lower legs and feet were carried over from the original design. The most significant changes were to the power supply and pump, which now allow the robot to operate untethered for the first time.
The onboard 3.7-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack powers the robot for one hour of “mixed mission” operation. The battery also power a new variable-pressure pump for more efficient, and quieter operation.
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