Industry 4.0 has arrived, and it means that automation and data exchange will play a major role in manufacturing. Those manufacturers who were open to trying new technologies already have smart factories in which industrial robots are doing most of the work. Here are some facts and numbers that illustrate what this trend really means:

• Even though the first industrial robot, which was installed at General Motors, was designed and produced in the United States, most of them are currently manufactured in Asia and Europe.

• About 1.8 million robots are in operation at the moment, in comparison, only 1.6 million people live in Philadelphia. By 2018, 2,3 million robots should be in use, which is equivalent to Huston’s population!

• Following today’s trends, by 2099 70% percent of our jobs will be automated. Similar to the process during the industrial revolution 200 years ago when 99% of farm jobs became automated.

• Robotics have increased labor productivity by about 0.35% annually — or by about the same amount as did the steam engine during the years 1850 to 1910

• The demand for robots is highly concentrated: 80% of robots sold go to only these 5 countries: U.S., South Korea, Japan, Germany and China.

• We might not think of it at first, but South Korea is the most automated country. They have 4,37 robots installed per 100 employees, which 14,5 times more than China!

• Manufacturing is the biggest sector considering the use of robots, it takes up 40% of them. Within manufacturing, automation (43%), electronics (21%) and metal (9%) are the most significant segments.

• Some factory robots, like Baxter from Rethink Robotics, are purchasable for as little as $25,000 already, which is the same as paying a full-time human worker $4 an hour over the life of the machine.

• Many employees fear that they won’t be able to compete with robots and they will lose their jobs to them. If we look at the U.S., between 2009 and 2015 the number of robots has increased by 55%, and the unemployment rate decreased by 42%. Are their worries ill-founded maybe?

• Certain robots are not only to enhance efficiency or productivity but to make art: for example in Manchester a robot orchestra performed in front of an audience in July for the first time.

If you want to find more interesting info on the subject of industrial robots, check out this info-graph from TradeMachines!

Read also Facts About Robots

Read also How Does A Bomb Disposal Robot Work

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It’s all down to the accelerometer, which is built into the circuitry of all modern-day smartphones. It can detect changes in orientation and tell the phone to respond accordingly by rotating its screen.

Accelerometers are made up of two fundamental parts.

The first is the housing, which attaches tothe object in question. The second is some form of mass, which is capable of moving when the object’s orientation changes. This movement is the key to how it works, and is what the device measures in order to identify a change in the phone’s orientation.

The accelerometer fi tted inside a smartphone is an incredible piece of engineering. It is only 500 microns across, and is made by etching into a piece of silicon using potassium hydroxide.

This clever device can be used for more than just identifying the orientation. It can be employed in gaming, particularly in driving games, where the user steers a vehicle by tilting their smartphone.

They can also be used like a pedometer to track your daily steps, or even to detect tremors as part of an earthquake early warning system.

Apple has included an accelerometer in each generation of iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch…

Read also How Does Touch-Screen Tablets Work!

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These innovations hold the key to cutting costs and reducing the need for a physical police presence. As criminals become wiser to police practices, smart technology will become paramount.

Facial recognition, laser-mapping and secure police apps have all been signifi cant additions to police forces around the world, and are now relied upon extensively.

Security bots

Knightscope K5 is the world’s first security bot that its inventors believe can cut crime by 50 per cent in the areas it patrols. The K5 stands at just over 1.5 metres (five feet) tall and is fi tted with an array of technology, from number plate recognition to thermal imaging. It even has odour detectors that can monitor pollution.

The K5 is designed to be fully autonomous, patrolling and charging itself without any human involvement. In spite of its ominous appearance it is not weaponised, mainly working towards crime prevention and serving as an extra source of intelligence for the police.

The K5 will initially be used as part of campus security, either for universities or businesses that occupy large sites.

However, there is no reason why these clever robots won’t eventually make their way onto our streets.

The K5 can measure distance and 3D-map areas by illuminating a target with a laser and then analysing the reflected light, a technology known as Light Image Detection and Ranging (LIDAR).

Dazzler

The Dazzler does much more than temporarily blind bad guys: it can also stop them in their tracks.

Developed by Intelligent Optical Systems Inc for the Department of Homeland Security in the United States, this flashlight measures the distance to the target’s eyes with a range finder, so that it can adjust the strength of the light pulses it fires to ensure that no permanent damage is done.

These ultrabright light emitting diodes (LEDs) incapacitate a person in two ways.

The flashes cause temporary blindness like any strong light does, but the real innovation lies in the psychophysical effects, ranging from vertigo to disorientation to nausea, typically lasting for a few minutes.

Read also Mind Controlled Robotic Arm!

Real RoboCop headset

Golden-i is a new wearable headset that provides police offi cers with superhuman abilities. The Golden-i gives the wearer access to important information quickly and easily, and is operated by voice commands and head movements, leaving the offi cer’s hands free.

It provides real-time situational awareness by accessing nearby CCTV and live video feeds from other headsets in the area.

The accompanying Police Pro application has facial recognition software to identify suspects already known to the police, and can call up floor plans and GPS coordinates of places of interest. Most impressive of all is its ability to see through walls using infrared technology, great for finding a hiding suspect when combined with its thermal vision application.

The Golden-i’s 14-megapixel camera is inertially stabilised, allowing even a running police offi cer to record smooth video of a crime in progress. Slightly different versions of Golden-i have also been designed for firefighters and paramedics.

Read also Facts About Robots!

Police drones

Police surveillance drones can be controlled remotely by officers, allowing them to follow a fleeing suspect without risking injury to
themselves. Modern drones can stream live video either to police cars or headquarters, so that the suspect’s location and activity can be monitored in real time.

A drone can capture video, quickly identifying points of interest that crime scene investigators can examine further. Dangerous crime scenes that forensic teams wouldn’t dare enter become accessible, and these autonomous machines can fly in and detail the evidence before it is damaged further by any adverse building conditions.

For police patrolling at night, visibility is always an issue. Thermal-imaging cameras give droness the night-vision, perfect for finding a suspect hiding under the cover of night. Advanced systems can see a full 360 degrees around the drone due to their pan and tilt functions.

Weaponised police drones won’t be permitted in many parts of the world, although there has been a law passed in North Dakota in the United States to allow police to fire tasers from drones. The potential uses of drones are vast, but we are yet to see how much the police will utilise them.

Facial reconstruction system

Various methods for facial reconstruction have existed for decades, but none are as impressive as Snapshot DNA phenotyping. This technique can be used in the absence of photographic or video evidence, and can create a prediction of what a suspect’s face looks like just using a sample of their DNA.

It determines skin, hair and eye colour, as well as face shape and detailed biogeopraphic ancestry.

When the police have nothing else to go on this information is invaluable, and can quickly narrow down a list of suspects. Hopefully, as our understanding of DNA improves it will be possible to pick out further characteristics, which will allow even more detailed facial reconstructions to be created.

Read also How Does A Bomb Disposal Robot Work.

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Unfortunately, supersonic airplanes are not used today. They were a symbol of the 20th century which is, at least for now, according to this criterion was more advanced than the 21st century. However, in all probability, this is only a temporary condition and “supersonic” future come soon.

The fastest airliner in the world (was) a famous Franco-British aircraft Concorde, which is due to unprofitability in 2003 officially withdrawn from use.

Concorde is regarded as the most famous supersonic airliner in the world but it is not, as many think, the only, or even the first of its kind to be used for the purposes of civil air traffic. In fact, only three months before the European Concorde in the air took off a Russian supersonic airplane Tupolev Tu-144, it was in December 1968. The Americans also had their “ace in the hole,” supersonic plane “Boeing 2707” but they gave up on “supersonic race” and their plane never took off.

Airplane Concorde is a result of cooperation between the French company Aérospatiale and British BAC. The first plane was officially flew 02 March 1969 from the airport in Toulouse and in commercial traffic has officially entered on 21 January 1976. It is produced only 16 planes (+ 4 prototypes).

Read also article How is a Plane Constructed

When Did Concorde Crash

The cause of the demise of Concorde and supersonic commercial flight in general was unprofitability, but “the straw that broke the camel” or reason for the withdrawal of supersonic planes was the plane crash in which an Air France Concorde caught fire and crashed in 2000 during takeoff from Paris.

This “spectacular” plane crash had an incredible public response which resulted in an even greater reduction of interest in too expensive “supersonic” flights that were exclusively privilege of the rich.

The result of the disaster was the 113 victims (of which 4 on the land). Airplane was officially withdrawn from traffic three years later on 24 October 2003, and the last flight was on 26 November of the same year.

Technical-technological perfection of this plane is in the fact that it was twice faster than sound. It was flying at a speed of Mach 2.04 (about 2170 km / h) where with the announcement a few minutes earlier, broke the sound barrier. Distance between London and New York it could pass for only 3.5 hours compared to 7 hours as the flight with ordinary subsonic passenger aircraft.

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Civil aviation was developed after World War II. During the twenties of the 20th century, travelers often fly with postal planes, sometimes with the postal bags in the wing. In the late thirties flying has become much more comfortable way to travel. The first international passenger flights from London to Paris, began in 1919. The first passenger planes were often refurbished bombers from World War II.

The first jet plane “Heinkel He-178” took off in 1939. But the main development of jets came after Second World War. The first jet airliner “The heavy land comet” was put into service in 1952. Today, on almost all long-distance flight jet airplanes.

Most of the planes have a central part of which is called fuselage with wings. Smaller wings, horizontal stabilizers and vertical stabilizer, tail, are located on the rear of the fuselage. Straight wings are best for transporting massive loads at low speeds, while the faster drive used the wings angled back. Some military jets, as “Tornado”, have movable wings, which can additionally be moved at high speed in reverse.

Some planes do not have smaller wings as horizontal stabilizers. Instead, wings create a triangle which is called delta. This model of wings was applied on “Concorde”. Delta wings are good for high-speed but at low speeds does not behave well. For several types of aircraft wings are set back and the horizontal stabilizers are located at the front.

The planes usually have a frame made of light alloy such as duralumin. They are covered with panels of lightweight metals that make up the shell and fuselage very strong, such as tube. The wings are designed in a similar way. Before this technique was developed, twenties of the last century, airplanes had wooden or metal frame covered with canvas or fixed with wire.

Majority of modern airplanes used jet engines of various types. Even when using a propeller, power can come from turbo-propellor engines. Until the fifties, most airplanes had propellers driven by conventional motors. Some small planes have also today. These engines operate on the same principle as the engines of cars.

Inside the aircraft most is space for passengers which includes seats. Behind this section are placed rear toilets and rear kitchen. In front of the plane is located cockpit in which the pilot and co-pilot’s seat and control aircraft…

Few facts: Concorde was the first supersonic (faster than sound) airliner, today’s planes fly at half the speed than the Concorde. The fast is that one Jumbo Jet using the same amount of fuel transports four times more passengers than the Concorde. Here you can check what caused the Demise of Concorde

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Where underground seams of coal and other minerals are made accessible via a vertical shaft, an elevator is required to lower mine workers down to the appropriate depth. The shafts themselves are circular or rectangular and can employ timber and brick to shore up the walls, although steel and concrete are much stronger support materials used in deeper mines where the lateral pressure is greater.

The basic mine-shaft elevator consists of a drum with a length of suspension cable coiled around it, which is attached at one end to the passenger-carrying car. Both the thickness of the cable and the material it’s made of will depend on the type and depth of the mine shaft. A counterweight that makes up around 40 per cent of the car’s maximum weight hangs on the other end of the cable, helping to control its movement.

Subterranean lift mechanics

Take a tour of one of these underground elevators to unearth the key components…

Drum – The hydraulic engine that turns the drum can hoist in excess of 10m (33ft) a second.

Head frame – It goes by many names, such as pit frame and winding tower, but essentially this structure’s job is to support the hoist/drum.

Collar – A reinforced platform that provides a solid foundation for the head frame and a stable area for loading and unloading the car.

Suspension – The steel cables the car travels on might have a diameter of 4cm (1.6in) and a tensile strength of around 1,670N/mm2.

Lining – Responsible for maintaining the integrity of the shaft barrel and preventing any loose rock from falling down, the lining material is dictated by the local geology, but is usually finished with high-strength concrete.

Car – Depending on the type of mine, the cars can easily carry dozens of miners and/or heavy equipment.

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In an automotive alternator, the mechanical energy is delivered by the vehicle’s crankshaft, which rotates. This rotational energy is passed via a drive belt and pulley to the alternator, and replicates it in an internal rotor shaft.

The turning of the alternator’s rotor shaft causes an attached iron core, surrounding field winding and set of staggered magnetic claw poles to rotate at high speed (up to thousands of times per minute). This entire assembly is referred to as the alternator’s rotor, with it slotting into another element called the stator.

The alternator’s stator is a laminated soft iron, roughly spherical component wrapped with, typically, three sets of copper phase windings. The stator, unlike the rotor, is fixed in place, attached to the inside of the alternator’s housing. As mentioned, the rotor sits within the stator while it spins, with the two offset slightly to avoid any direct contact.

As the rotor assembly rotates the staggered magnetic claw poles (with north and south poles alternating) generate a magnetic field. Because the field lines continuously change, however – due to the north-south polarity of the claw poles – the flux within the stator changes too, inducing an alternating current to flow through its phase windings.

As the current in the stator’s phase windings is alternating, it needs to be converted into direct current (DC) for use in battery charging. This is achieved by feeding the alternating current in each phase winding through stator leads and into a set of diodes (two for each lead). Known as rectifiers, these diodes ensure that current flows in a single direction.

The total flow of direct current from each of the phase windings combined is controlled by a regulator unit. This prevents an excess of direct current from being fed into the vehicle’s battery – something that if left unchecked would cause it to overcharge and potentially explode.

Alternator anatomy

Casing – The outer housing of the alternator is made from aluminium. This material is used as it reduces weight, dissipates heat and does not magnetise.

Regulator – This controls the distribution of the electrical energy that the alternator produces, ensuring a safe power supply to the vehicle’s battery and electrical systems.

Diode assembly – The diodes convert the AC energy produced by the alternator into usable DC by only letting current move in one direction.

Stator – The stator is a stationary set of copper coils (phase windings) that the alternator’s rotor slots between. The stator acts as an armature, inducing voltage due to the influence of the rotor-generated magnetic field.

Rotor assembly – The rotor is made up of claw poles placed around a series of field windings and an iron core. The poles alternate in a staggered pattern to induce flux, and thus current, in the stator.

Pulley – The pulley holds the engine’s drive belt, which is connected to the vehicle’s crankshaft. This supplies the alternator’s rotor shaft with rotational energy.

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In this modern version of The Three Little Pigs story the house with the best design is the one that stays upright. But in the 21st century, buildings have a lot more to contend with than hungry wolves.

There are now nine buildings in the world that are over half a kilometre tall with more planned or currently under construction.

At that height, winds cause skyscrapers to sway from side to side by up to two metres (6.6 feet) on the top floors. From below, earthquakes can vibrate the ground to such an extent it turns to quicksand, causing buildings to pull loose from their foundations and topple clean over. Fortunately today’s architects have more than straw, sticks and bricks at their disposal…

Concrete has been used since Ancient Roman times, but the modern version comes in a lot of exciting new flavours. Concrete can be made extra light, extra dense, springy, translucent and even self-healing, while glass can be shatterproof, load bearing and heatproof. And there are totally brand-new materials too…

Magnetorheological fluid normally behaves as a liquid, but in a magnetic field it stiffens to become solid. Pistons filled with this wonder fluid can act as dynamic shock absorbers with great strength and lightning-fast responses. Previously this was the preserve of high-tech vehicle suspensions, but engineers are now starting to use magnetorheological dampers to control earthquake vibrations in tall buildings.

Halochromic paints change colour if the underlying metal begins to rust. This tech is still being trialled for use on aircraft, but one day could warn if a bridge needs repainting.

Fire is a threat to all buildings but the danger is particularly acute in skyscrapers. However many storeys you stack on top of each other, everyone still has to evacuate via the ground floor. The Burj Khalifa has over 160 floors and so taking the stairs all the way down just isn’t practical. Instead the elevators feature water-resistant equipment, redundant power supplies and drainage sills to keep water from the sprinklers out of the lift shafts. If you do need to take the stairs, there are pressurised, air-conditioned refuge areas every 25 floors to allow evacuees to rest and the stairwells are built from highly fire-resistant concrete.

In 1956 the architect Frank Lloyd Wright proposed the Mile High Illinois Sky-City. A steel-framed building 1,600 metres (5,250 feet) tall would have swayed far too much using the construction techniques of the time, and the lift shafts would have taken up all the space on the upper floors, so the project was scrapped.

However, materials, techniques and technology have all come on leaps and bounds since then and a lot of the practical problems have now been solved. The Burj Khalifa is already more than half the height of Lloyd Wright’s science-fiction design and human ingenuity shows no signs of slowing down.

Counteracting the wind

Because they are anchored at the bottom and free at the top, tall buildings sway in the wind. Skyscrapers can defend against this by making themselves stiffer, but only up to a point as stiffer materials are more prone to cracking. Sometimes it is better to design the building with some flexibility and to avoid harmonic frequencies that could exaggerate the movement. Dubai’s Burj Khalifa uses a deliberately irregular, stepped shape to break up wind vortices, while others like the Taipei 101 use tuned mass dampers – giant hydraulic pendulums hung near the top -that swing to counterbalance sway from the wind. Low-rise buildings aren’t safe either. In a hurricane, pitched roofs act like an aerofoil as wind passes over them, sucking them upwards. Hurricane-proof houses use steel struts or cables that run through the walls to bind the roof to the foundations.

Staying steady in an earthquake

Most office buildings and skyscrapers are built with floors and roofs resting atop wall pillars. Their strength comes from the huge weight pressing down. But this strength is a vulnerability in an earthquake as the floors collapse in on themselves. For medium-sized buildings, the best way to quake-proof them is to cut down on the weight.

Lighter roofs and floors lower the peak stresses during an earthquake, while constructing concrete floors by pouring them in situ bonds them to the walls.

Some skyscrapers have huge roller bearings in the foundations that allow the whole building to slide without cracking. Tuned mass dampers can also be used to counter quakes.

Sensing disasters before they happen

Sensors are very cheap compared to the cost of a skyscraper or a suspension bridge, but their valuable information could save lives. Accelerometers provide the raw data to control the swing in the mass damper pendulums of some skyscrapers. But even when the building can’t react immediately, sensors are still vital. The strain gauges on a bridge can detect dangerous harmonic oscillations before they get out of control. This allows the bridge to be shut and helps engineers find tiny cracks that might otherwise be missed. Sensors don’t operate in isolation. Wired and wireless networks connect them to computers that analyse patterns. If sensor A records a movement and milliseconds later sensor B records the same movement, it shows a vibration passing through the building. This data can even be passed from one building to another, allowing smart structures to interact and send out early warnings.

Concrete is getting clever

Building smart structures isn’t just about attaching microcomputers; sometimes the technology is embedded in the actual building materials. Reinforced concrete is strengthened with steel bars, but steel isn’t the only thing you can add to concrete. Adding plastic fibres with a special nonstick coating makes concrete as springy as wood. Alternatively adding optical glass fibres that run from one side to the other lets enough light through to make concrete translucent; that’s not just attractive – translucent concrete can let you spot cracks deep within a block. But the ultimate building material doesn’t just reveal cracks, it repairs them. A team in the Netherlands is developing concrete which has tiny capsules of special bacterial spores embedded in it (pictured). Any water that seeps in through hairline cracks reactivates the dormant spores. As they reanimate, they produce limestone as a by-product, which seals up the cracks.

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The result of this cross-sectional layering is that solid and hollow items can be created by simply inputting the desired object’s dimensions into the 3D printer.

The design schematics for 3D printer models come from computer-aided design (CAD) files, with a virtual model parsed into thousands of cross sections, which become instructions for the printer’s control units.

This data dictates exactly where to deposit the material in each layer, with the process taking place on a stable, non-stick surface called the build plate.

Uses for 3D printers are extremely varied, with applications in the military, medical, industrial and commercial spheres.

A good example of this is the use of 3D printing in the prototyping of new machine components. Here complex designs for intricate parts can be quickly and cheaply constructed out of biodegradable plastic, trialled in a test machine and then tweaked if necessary.

While previously 3D printing has largely been confined to large-scale operations due to high cost, in the last five or so years desktop 3D printers aimed at enthusiasts have emerged.

These allow anyone to feed a printer with designs from their PC – banks of online designs exist – or a memory card, and make models at home. One such DIY printer is the MakerBot: Replicator 2.

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In terms of hardware, the Z10 is powered by a 1.5-gigahertz Qualcomm MSM8960 dual-core processor paired with two gigabytes of mobile DDR2 SDRAM, an internal bank of 16 gigabytes of flash memory and a large 3.8-volt lithium-ion battery. This core feature set is bolstered by the inclusion of an eight-megapixel rear-facing camera, a two-megapixel forward-facing camera and a 10.7-centimetre (4.2-inch), 1,280 x 768-pixel touchscreen – the latter coated with a layer of hardened, scratch-resistant glass.

The BlackBerry 10 OS is a proprietary variant based on QNX – a Unix-like embedded operating system – which allows for the integration of features such as multitouch gestures, advanced multitasking operations, screen-shared video calls and voice control of the device. Indeed, the 10 OS is heavily optimised for multitouch gestures and is based around a piece of software called BlackBerry Hub, a content and connectivity aggregator that displays a lot of key data in list form.

In terms of connectivity, the Z10 is installed with an NFC (near-field communication) antenna built in to the backplate and has support for both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity. The Z10 is compatible – dependent on model – with network connections up to 4G LTE.

Inside Z10

Screen – The Z10’s 10.7cm (4.2in), 356 ppi touchscreen delivers a 15:9 aspect ratio. The digitizer is applied directly to the glass and fused to the LCD.

Back camera – The Z10’s rear-facing, 8MP auto-focus camera has a five-element f/2.2 lens, dedicated image signal processor and 64MB frame buffer.

Top assembly – The phone’s ambient light sensor, headphone jack, power switch and earpiece speaker housing are built in to a single assembly at the top of the device.

Battery – A 3.8V, 1,800mAh removable lithium-ion battery powers the Z10 and has enough juice for over ten hours of talk time per charge.

HDMI port – The Z10 comes with two main ports: a micro HDMI for routing media to an HDTV and a micro USB 2.0 connection for charging and data transfer.

Front camera – A 2MP, fixed-focus camera is also included. This offers image and video stabilization, a 3x digital zoom and 720p video recording.

Motherboard – The mainboard holds a bounty of chips and integrated circuits including 16GB of NAND flash memory, accelerometer and dual-core Snapdragon CPU.

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