Category: Technology

Glacier Technology Tuesday – US Navy to Deploy Lasers on Ships

How about laser weapons mounted on Navy vessels? The Navy announced that is is prepared to deploy Laser Weapons to the US Fleet. These infrared blow torches are 12 for 12 in taking down targets so next year the Pentagon plans to mount one on the back of ship and give it some real-world operational experience.

Navy officials announced Monday that in early 2014, a solid-state laser prototype will be mounted to the fantail of the USS Ponce and sent to the 5th fleet region in the Middle East for real-world experience.

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One of its major advantages, the Navy said, is its relatively low cost to operate. “Its weapon round costs about $1 to shoot,” said Rear Admiral Matthew Klunder, chief of Naval Research. Although the unit cost is higher — at around $32 million to produce.

So far targets have been limited to small boats and unmanned vehicles. There are some concerns about how effective it could be under less than optimal weather conditions, but then that is partly the point of field testing it in real-world conditions. They are not commenting on the weapons range or whether they believe it capable of taking out faster moving targets, but….

The Navy is working on just such a gun of course.

Called the FEL — for free-electron laser, which doesn’t use a gain medium and is therefore more versatile — it was tested in February 2011, consuming blistering amounts of energy and burning through feet of raw steel.

The FEL will easily get into the kilowatt power range, experts say. It can also be easily tuned as well, to adjust to environmental conditions, another reason it is more flexible than the fixed wavelength of solid-state laser.

A Navy armed with laser weapons is in our immediate future.

Have Scientists Just Created an Invisibility Cloak?

We like science and technology so when Mashable posted a report that researchers at the University of Texas, Austin had created a light scattering metascreen–we had to check it out.

Light scattering metascreen? See also ‘invisibility cloak.’ Well, sort of.

Titled “Demonstration of an ultralow profile cloak for scattering suppression of a finite-length rod in free space,” their research, published in the New Journal of Physics, describes a cloak consisting of 66 µm-thick copper tape and 100 µm-thick flexible polycarbonate film which scatters and cancels out incoming waves.

At this stage the researchers agree that the same process could be applied to visible light wavelengths but that the objects they could “hide” would have to be very small.

Touchscreen PC Submerged Then Hosed off…Fully Powered and Operational

We took a fully functional touchscreen PC, submerged it in a puddle of muck, then hosed it off, all while plugged in and running.. because we could.

This computer (Glacier – S9000) is made for food processing operations, outdoor kiosks, farms, or any any indoor or outdoor application, fixed or mobile, AC or DC power, anywhere you might want a shiny stainless steel unit you can hose off whenever you think it’s gotten too dirty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8kULR3wAC8U

On-Line Training Options for Aerial Lift Operators

Aerial Work Platforms are great places for using rugged computing power. Wireless data collection when you are elevated above the ground-whether on a fixed, tablet, or hand-held computer--just makes sense. But before you ever set foot on one you’ll want to make sure you are certified and fully understand the best practices that ensure safe operation.

To that end the International Powered Access Federation (IPAF) and its US affiliate–American Work Platform Training (AWPT), have developed a successful online training program to help achieve the necessary certification.

Trainees who complete the online session must still pass a supervised theory test at an AWPT-approved training center and must successfully complete a half-day of practical training and testing before being issued with a PAL Card (Powered Access Licensed-Registration) as proof of successfully completed AWPT operator training.

Forklift Action News (free registration required) recently reported on this same program and how NES Rentals Holdings Inc (NES Rentals), a supplier of all kinds of lift equipment, had successfully “trained most of its 1,040 staff members to the level of the Powered Access License (PAL) card.”

“eLearning opens up alternative methods of delivering education and takes the AWPT training program to a new level,” says IPAF president Wayne Lawson. “It provides a new way for training centres to reach greater numbers but does not replace practical training. It enriches the learning process and allows us to bring the safe and effective use of AWPs to a wider public.”

Laser Scanning And Mobile Computing Meet The Construction Industry

The Journal of Commerce reports that Construction and excavation operations are taking advantage of mobile technology and 3D laser scanners to do what used to take hours or days.

“The 3D laser scanner creates thousands of point clouds to take measurements and visualizations,” he said.

“It’s much faster and more accurate than survey crews.”

Buness used a survey rod with a hand-held controller that looks like a rugged outdoor tablet and which contained the survey control points.

“After the scan was created, it was converted into a usable 3D point file, and then it was integrated into the 3D BIM environment,” Buness said.

“Once in the 3D environment, the scan was used to establish the location of the excavation wall faces.”

The ability to take mobile computing power into the field, combined with new imaging technology, will provide better detail analysis for a wide range of applications, at a fraction of what it used to cost to pay survey crews.

Is Everything Built To Be Broken?

tablet and iphone — Refurbished technology or new? You should have options.

Consumer Electronics Talker Kim Komando recently published a list of common technology myths. Things like MAC’s never get viruses, the more megapixels the better, public Wi-Fi is safe and a myth near and dear to our hearts–Always buy new gear.

To quote Kim…

As long as you buy direct from the manufacturer or a trusted re-seller and there’s a good return policy and warranty in place, there isn’t much of a downside to buying refurbished.

Kim is referring to refurb as a first time buy and we agree. There are plenty of great deals on “refurbished” consumer tech that cost a fraction of what new will run. A great example is my first (and only) portable GPS system for my car. I bought it so long ago I can’t recall, refurbished, for about a third of the retail price of a new one. It still works great today. And I have no plan or need to replace it.

But you can’t always use consumer tech in rugged applications and you can’t always start out with refurb.

An Environmentally Friendly Super Battery That Could Change Everything?

Introducing Graphene, a carbon based super capacitor that charges like a capacitor but could discharge like a battery. It has tremendous structural strength but is extremely light. The cost to create it, at this point, is extremely low, while its potential as the battery of the future is high.

Oh yeah, and this “super capacitor” is made entirely of carbon. When you’re done with it you could throw it in your compost.

Modern batteries are heavy, environmentally unfriendly at both ends of their life, are made with things we (in the US at least) have to import. Graphene is made with ordinary carbon, is abundant, and offers us the potential for exactly the opposite.

It has the potential to change the world. Here’s some video

(direct link if video fails to load)