Welcome to another bumper issue of Motion Control. As always energy efficiency is a critical issue, and our cover story shows how Schneider Electric’s Altivar 1200 medium voltage drive system improves the management of the motors that control pumps, fans and compressors. This is the foundation of an effective energy management solution.
Motion control in the automotive industry
This quarter we feature the automotive industry, which brings to mind Google’s driverless cars. A while ago we had a feature on them but Google has since made great strides. Its fleet of prototypes of a converted Toyota Prius has covered more than 480 000 km on public roads and three states in the USA have legislation allowing these cars. Now they are to be tested on UK roads by the end of 2013 and commercial cars are expected on the market by 2017. Some of the advantages include less congestion and fewer accidents due to texting, drunk driving, inattentive driving or sleepiness. Think of the possibilities. You can have a night on the town without having to worry about getting home. Productivity would go through the roof as drivers could transform their commuting time into working time. As always there are conflicting opinions when there’s something new. Concerns include the possibility of a virus or hard drive crash, or the car being taken over by hackers.
Also on cars, we have a story on how Festo has investigated compressed air applications in car body manufacturing and shown that energy savings of up to 35% are possible. Some local good news is that the Mercedes-Benz production plant in East London has earned an unprecedented fifth consecutive placement amongst the top assembly plants in the Europe-Africa region in terms of new vehicle production quality. MBSA now boasts one platinum, two gold and two silver awards over a five year period in the IQS survey, an international automotive industry benchmark.
Some more excellence
Student engineering competitions like Pneumax and Sew-Eurodrive’s Pneudrive challenge have drawn some outstanding projects, with this year’s challenge being on the theme of Greener Mining; but the achievement of our student supercomputing champs really stands out. In News & Events we cover how first-time entrant South Africa stunned heavyweights China and the USA at an international student supercomputing competition in Germany, scooping overall top honours with the highest scores across the board and dropping a few jaws in the hall. This augurs well for the future of our scientists and projects like the Square Kilometre Array.
We also cover SKF’s intelligent wireless bearing technology, which enables bearings to communicate their operating conditions continuously. As SKF says, bearings are the heart of rotating machinery and now they are the brain as well.
Festo’s Perspectives on Water looks at how efficient systems in the field of water technology might look like in the future through AquaJelly, an artificial autonomous jellyfish with an electric drive unit and an intelligent adaptive mechanism that emulates swarming behaviour. This is part of Festo’s Bionic Learning Network which provides inspiration for new automation technology.
The world in three decades
Jim Pinto as usual has a grip on what’s going to happen in the future. He takes a look at the world in three decades time though the eyes of some top futurists meeting at the Global Futures 2045 congress. They paint a fascinating but slightly alarming picture of what the world is going to look like in the decades to come, describing how technology is going to drastically alter economies, biologies and perhaps even consciousness itself. The most daunting to me was the idea of a direct line from your brain to the cloud.
Engineering is beautiful
I recently came across an interesting website called Beautiful Engineering, which led me to an even more entertaining one with the name of Trust Me I’m A Mechanical Engineer. I was amazed by the cleverness of the submissions. Engineers are certainly not boring. They can be found at http://tinyurl.com/l3woypu.
Now in the mood, I found another one in Engineering And Leadership on Five Reasons Why Engineering Is Beautiful. They ranged from making the world a safer place, to keeping the lights on, to keeping people healthy. Another beautiful piece of engineering can be found in our story in News & Events about massive mechanical animals. At a shipping yard in Nantes, a majestic 12 metre high mechanical pachyderm walks the streets carrying 50 passengers on board. Inside it is a hive of activity – propelled by a 450 horse power motor, 60 cylinders, 2000 litres of oil and a complex system of jacks, pulleys and gears. I definitely want a ride on this one.
Kim Roberts
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