Driverless cars
In this issue we are focusing on applications in the automotive and marine industries. We have a story about Google’s driverless car. I must say I like the idea. Google has even driven the car over the San Francisco bridge. I also love the concept of an electric Grand Prix coming to South Africa. The performance of these cars is amazing (0 to 100 km/h in 3 seconds and a gear change in 150 ms) and it is only a matter of time before advances in battery technology allow them to keep going for a more practical length of time. On the marine side, Hytec reports on the refurbishment of the hydraulics on a diamond mining vessel operating off the Namibian coast; and Siemens describes how its Simatic controller makes it possible to manipulate 2000 tons of ship, using a mobile handheld device, while it is delicately lifted onto a platform.
Technology roadmap
In the USA the National Fluid Power Association has developed a technology roadmap for the fluid power industry aimed at meeting the future needs of fluid power customers, expanding fluid power into new customer markets and attracting the best and brightest young engineers to fluid power. Some of the key R&D challenges for the fluid power industry are:
* Increasing the energy efficiency of fluid power components and systems.
* Reducing the size of fluid power components and systems while maintaining or increasing their power output.
* Building ‘smart’ fluid power components and systems.
* Reducing the environmental impact of fluid power components and systems.
* Improving and applying the energy storage, recovery and redeployment capabilities of fluid power components and systems.
Many of these challenges are reflected in the products and applications featured in Motion Control. For example BMG represents Metal Work, a company which puts great store on environmental issues and which is involved in miniaturisation of valves. Artic Driers’ EcoTec process uses catalytic converters to produce pure water from compressor waste condensate. Schneider has an Energy University to educate its clients on energy efficient strategies. Lindos Hydraulics is in the business of helping customers energy optimise their hydrostatic drive systems and SKF offers energy efficient bearings.
When it comes to attracting bright young engineers, our industry has initiatives like the Pneudrive Challenge sponsored by SEW-Eurodrive and Festo, and the Cyber Junkyard sponsored by Siemens and the Lapp Group. Having recently watched the Cyber Junkyard drag races I can only feel optimistic about the young future engineers out there.
Webinars: the way to go
Webinars are becoming big news. Short for web-based seminar, a webinar is a presentation, lecture or seminar that is transmitted over the web. The audience pre-subscribes to participate in the event and is able to ask questions. They are an excellent way of attending interesting or educational presentations from anywhere in the world, in the comfort of your office or home, with the ability to interact with the presenter at the same time. If you can’t make it to the webinar you can download it and watch it at your convenience.
Web conferencing also offers a new kind of marketing opportunity. Webinars are able to target a very focused market segment: potential customers who are interested enough in the topic to register and listen. As well as generating lists of leads for sponsors and advertisers, they can bring credibility to a brand by associating it with an industry expert or thought leader.
Technews has now licensed the technology to host webinars using the Webex platform and so has available a new channel for companies to promote their marketing message in a powerful and cost effective way. As a publisher Technews has a large database of subscribers, which can be added to an advertiser’s in-house contact list to give a targeted list of prospective registrants. Technews then uses its existing tools, both print and online, to market and promote the event and the registration process for the sponsoring company. After the event is over, a comprehensive list of registrants is provided to the sponsor for follow up.
To get the ball rolling, Technews recently presented a webinar moderated by my colleague Steven Meyer, the editor of SA Instrumentation & Control. It featured our automation technology futurist Jim Pinto and he talked about ‘Emerging technologies and opportunities in factory automation and process control’.
The presentation and slides from his thought-provoking presentation can be downloaded at http://tiny.cc/sadfn.
For more information on the possibility of presenting your own webinar in the future, contact Jane ([email protected]) or Tina ([email protected]) at Technews.
Kim Roberts
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