Mobility Archives - Smarter Next

Uber Elevate team plans to add flying taxis to UBER’s on-demand transport mix

_H Promoted / _Super categories / Future transportation / Life / Mobility
Nov 5, 2016

Every day, millions of hours are wasted on the road worldwide. Last year, the average San Francisco resident spent 230 hours commuting between work and home1—that’s half a million hours of productivity lost every single day. In Los Angeles and Sydney, residents spend seven1 whole working weeks each year commuting, two of which are wasted unproductively stuck in gridlock2. In many global megacities, the problem is more severe: the average commute in Mumbai3 exceeds a staggering 90 minutes. For all of us, that’s less time with family, less time at work growing our economies, more money spent on fuel—and a marked increase in our stress levels: a study in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine , for example, found that those who commute more than 10 miles were at increased odds of elevated blood pressure4.

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Safer driving with Omron contactless heartbeat sensor

_S promoted / _Super categories / Life / Mobility / People & Society / Smart Living
Oct 17, 2016

OMRON Automotive Electronics Co., Ltd. (Head Office: Komaki, Aichi Prefecture, President: Katsuhiro Wada), a subsidiary of OMRON Corporation (TSE: 6645) has announced a prototype non- contact pulse sensor that can measure heart rates with high accuracy inside vehicles, where measurements are difficult to perform.

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Amsterdam gets world’s first fleet of autonomous boats

_S promoted / Environment / Future transportation / Life / Mobility / People & Society / Smart Habitat / Smart Living / Traffic control
Oct 2, 2016

In a collaboration with researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS Institute) has started the world’s first major research program on autonomous floating vessels in metropolitan areas. Roboat will be conducted by researchers from MIT, Delft University of Technology (TUD) and Wageningen University and Research (WUR). The five-year program has a budget of €25 million and is set in Amsterdam.

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Water instead of gasoline: Bosch innovation reduces fuel consumption by up to 13%

_Super categories / (video) / Future transportation / Life / Mobility / New Tech / Smart Industry / Work
Sep 11, 2016

Did you know that even advanced gasoline engines waste roughly a fifth of their fuel? Especially at high engine speeds, some of the gasoline is used for cooling instead of for propulsion. With its new water injection, Bosch shows that it does not have to be that way. Particularly when accelerating quickly or driving on the freeway, the injection of additional water makes it possible to reduce fuel consumption by up to 13 percent. “With our water injection, we show that the combustion engine still has some tricks up its sleeve,” says Dr. Rolf Bulander, chairman of the Bosch Mobility Solutions business sector and member of the board of management of Robert Bosch GmbH. The fuel economy offered by this Bosch technology comes especially to the fore in three- and four-cylinder downsized engines: in other words, in precisely the kind of engines to be found under the hood of any average midsize car.

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World-record electric motor for aircraft

_Super categories / (video) / Electric vehicle / Future transportation / Life / Mobility / Work
Sep 11, 2016

Siemens researchers have developed a new type of electric motor that, with a weight of just 50 kilograms, delivers a continuous output of about 260 kilowatts – five times more than comparable drive systems. This record-setting propulsion system successfully completed its first public flight today at Schwarze Heide Airport near Dinslaken, Germany, where it – almost silently – powered an Extra 330LE aerobatic airplane. The new drive system had already made its maiden flight on June 24th 2016. This advance means that hybrid-electric aircraft with four or more seats will now be possible. In addition, the company will be contributing this technology to the cooperative project that Siemens and Airbus agreed to in April 2016 for driving the development of electrically powered flight. Electric drives are scalable, and Siemens and Airbus will be using the record-setting motor as a basis for developing regional airliners powered by hybrid-electric propulsion systems. Siemens is determined to establish hybrid-electric propulsion systems for aircraft as a future area of business.