Wednesday 28 March 2018
Monday 26 March 2018
SOLAR ROADWAYS
Solar Roadways Incorporated is an American company based in Sandpoint, Idaho aiming to develop solar powered road panels to form a smart highway.
Their proof-of-concept technology combines a transparent driving surface with underlying solar cells, electronics and sensors to act as a solar array with programmable capability. The road panels are to be made from recycled materials and incorporate photovoltaic cells.The project has received criticism in regards to its feasibility.
The company was founded in 2006 by Scott and Julie Brusaw, with Scott as President and CEO. They envisioned replacing asphalt surfaces with structurally-engineered solar panels capable of withstanding vehicular traffic.The proposed system would require the development of strong, transparent, and self-cleaning glass with the necessary traction and impact-resistance properties at competitive cost.
In 2009, Solar Roadways received a $100,000 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) for Phase I to determine the feasibility of the proposed project.In 2011, Solar Roadways received $750,000 SBIR grant from the DOT for Phase II to develop and build a solar parking lot; from this, they built a 12-by-36-foot (3.7 by 11.0 m) parking lot covered with hexagonal glass-covered solar panels sitting on top of a concrete base, heated to prevent snow and ice accumulation, with LEDs to illuminate road lines and display messages. According to the Brusaws, the panels can sustain a 250,000 lb (110,000 kg) load.
In April 2014, the company started a crowdfunding drive at Indiegogo to raise money so they could get the product into production. The campaign raised 2.2 million dollars and became Indiegogo’s most popular campaign ever in terms of the number of backers it attracted.The success was attributed in part to a tweet made by actor George Takei, due to his more than 8 million followers. One of the Brusaws’ videos went viral, with over 20 million views as of November 2015. In December 2015, the USDOT announced that it had awarded Solar Roadways a Phase IIB SBIR contract to further their research. In 2016 they were given an additional $750,000.00
The first public installation was in Jeff Jones Town Square in Sandpoint, Idaho. It opened to the public on September 30, 2016. As a pilot install it is for walkways only. This installation consists of 30 Solar Roadways SR3 panels covering an area of roughly 150 square feet (14 m2). The cost of this installation was roughly $60,000 with the majority of the money coming from a grant from the Idaho Department of Commerce ($47,134), and a $10,000 grant from the Sandpoint Urban Renewal Agency. A webcam was installed to broadcast a view of the installation. The 30 tiles in Sandpoint aren’t yet generating power.The City of Sandpoint's Proposed 2016-2017 budget includes $500,000 for future Solar Roadways projects.
In 2014, Jonathan Levine, a professor of urban planning at the University of Michigan, expressed doubt regarding the political feasibility of the project on a national scale. He suggested, however, that a single town might be able to deploy the concept in a limited test case such as a parking lot.
Journalist David Biello, writing in Scientific American, noted the difficulties of the project in dealing with material limitations, particularly in its choice of making the surface of the panels from glass, which "must be tempered, self-cleaning, and capable of transmitting light to the PV below under trying conditions, among other characteristics—a type of glass that does not yet exist."
Sebastian Anthony noted in ExtremeTech that the cost to replace all roads in the United States with Solar Roadways panels would come to approximately $56 trillion, based on Scott Brusaw's cost estimate of $10,000 for a 12-by-12-foot (3.7 m × 3.7 m) section. The USDOT announcement of Phase IIB funding in December 2015 mentioned that because the solar cells were still manufactured by hand, they were "very costly to produce".
source : - driving on glass solar road..Scientific American. October 6, 2009. Retrieved February 24, 2015
Saturday 24 March 2018
Monday 19 March 2018
Scientists take multi-coloured images with a lensless camera
Using only a piece of ground glass and a monochrome sensor, the
scientists created multi-coloured images by 'reverse engineering' the light
that is scattered by the translucent matt surface of the ground glass, thus
obtaining the original image that was projected on to it.
Since different wavelengths of light are scattered differently by the
ground glass, the NTU scientists created an algorithm to reconstruct the image.
To do this they created a library of 'speckle patterns' linked to each
wavelength of light, including those in the infrared and ultraviolet spectrums
which are not visible to the naked eye.
In a conventional camera, optics made from glass or plastic lenses
capture light and guide it onto the colour filters and camera sensor to obtain
sharp colour images. These lenses are usually bulky in size and expensive due
to the precision manufacturing required.
By removing the need for a lens and colour filters and replacing them
with ground glass, this innovation could potentially be applied to compact
cameras and smart phones to make them slimmer.
Assistant Professor Steve Cuong Dang from the NTU School of Electrical
and Electronic Engineering who led the research, said their new imaging
technique could help to improve imaging applications in biomedical and
scientific applications as well as opening new doors for other industries.
"Our technology can also reconstruct images in other multiple wavelengths
invisible to the naked eye, like infrared and ultraviolet, which are used in
imaging purposes for medicine, surveillance and astrophysics. It can also
reconstruct images taken at the microscopic scale," explained Prof Dang.
"Our multispectral imaging technique uses a monochromic (black and
white) camera coupled with a simple piece of ground glass, making it very
cost-effective compared to existing multispectral cameras on the market.
"The unique feature of our camera is that it can capture any range of
light spectrum, unlike existing cameras on the market which are pre-fixed. It
is also less affected by optical alignment issues like conventional cameras,
because there are no moving parts and no focusing optics."
An interdisciplinary research project
Professor Yoon Soon Fatt, Chair of NTU's School of Electrical and
Electronic Engineering said the innovation was the result of interdisciplinary
research involving both physics and photonics engineering.
"How light interacts with objects change with varying wavelengths,
so our scientists had to think out of the box, in order to design a camera not
limited by the typical red, green and blue spectrums. This research is an
example of how advanced photonics research can lead to potential improvements
to diagnostics, sensing and surveillance technologies." Prof Yoon said.
This interdisciplinary project took Prof Dang and his researchers Dr
Sujit Kumar Sahoo, and Dr Tang Dongliang, over a year of research and
development.
"There are other potential areas of application where our technique
could be useful. For instance, it could be used for food safety, where one can
take a photo of fruits or meat in particular spectra to look for spots that are
associated with chemicals or bacterial activity leading to spoilage," said
Dr Sahoo, who is the first author of the paper.
The research team used their technique to distinguish between two
different apple juices which look identical to the naked eye, but have
different colour spectrums signalling their difference in ingredient or
freshness, for instance.
It could also be used for forensics, as the camera could be tuned to
capture a wide spectrum, including near infrared and ultraviolet, to reveal
clues or evidence invisible under normal circumstances.
With only a snapshot picture and a computational algorithm, this
multispectral imaging technique combines the strengths of vision technology and
spectroscopy to do multiple analysis at very high speeds.
A patent has been filed for this new technology by NTU's innovation and
enterprise arm, NTUitive, and the research team will be engaging industry
partners to see how they can adapt their technology for real-world
applications.
Supported by NTUitive and the LUX Photonics Consortium, the team
received keen interest from industry players and potential adopters to further
develop this technology in the fields of vision correction and chemical
sensing. This innovation was featured on the cover of the scientific journal
Optica in Oct 2017.
Story Source:
Materials provided by Nanyang Technological
University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
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