Top TechTop Tech #78: Rover Remote, Russian microwave cannon, Evaporation engine
Important innovations in science and technology, every day
By Paul Worthington
Wednesday’s Top Tech:
• Remote Control a Jaguar Land Rover
• Russia microwave cannon kills drones
• Evaporation energizes engine
Remote Control a Jaguar Land Rover
While self-driving cars might be in our near future, a car that you occasionally remote control might be arriving sooner.
Jaguar says a prototype Land Rover’s steering, accelerator and brakes can be controlled via an app and a smart phone.
Why would you want to do that? To get out of dangerous situations, the company says, or even to park the car when being outside of it gives you a better vantage point.
UK-based Jaguar Land Rover researchers are also “developing new sensing technologies that will work in all weathers and in all environments - so any future autonomous car can go anywhere,” the company says. “Autonomous driving prototypes include the ‘Multi-Point Turn’ Range Rover Sport, which will perform an autonomous 180-degree turn in the road.”
Russia microwave cannon kills drones
The Kremlin claims it can fry the skies from a distance of six miles, Popular Mechanics reports.
Citing a story in Russia’s Sputnik News, PM says the microwave cannon could knock out missiles, warheads, and drones.
That is, it will knock out the electronics in those armaments — it won’t actually blow ‘em out of the sky or anything.
State-owned United Instrument Manufacturing Corp built the weapon, and says its “high-power relativistic generator and reflector antenna,” as well as management and control system, and a transmission system, are fixed on the chassis of surface-to-air missile systems.
Evaporation energizes engine
The simple natural process of evaporation can be harnessed to turn a turbine, report scientists at Columbia University.
The “moisture mill” turns continuously as water evaporates from the wet paper lining the walls of the engine. The team has made both a piston-style engine that generates electricity, and a rotary engine that drives a miniature car.
“When evaporation energy is scaled up, it could one day produce electricity from giant floating power generators that sit on bays or reservoirs, or from huge rotating machines akin to wind turbines that sit above water,” says the Ph.D. behind the innovation.
What’s he calling it? Hydra: for hygroscopy-driven artificial muscles.
