Pressurized booty

Holy crap! I thought it was a myth, but the bloody things are real! A car powered by compressed air! How did they do it??

Hmmm, well, it seems there really weren’t any striking new technological barriers that needed breaking. The engine is pretty much the same as the engine you have in your car. The only difference is that this engine uses compressed air to drive the pistons instead of burning fuel.
‘Compressed air’, I hear you say? How do they keep a lid on that? After all, highly pressurized air isn’t exactly the safest thing in the world. It has a nasty tendency to explode. Oh, I’m sorry, I meant ‘rapidly decompress’.

They keep all that compressed air in carbon fiber tanks at 300 atmospheres pressure. This sort of pressure should be able to drive you 140km on urban roads, give or take.
Pumping air into those tanks is a different story altogether though. You need some pretty costly heavy-duty pumping stations to fill them up properly.
Technically speaking though, the ‘zero pollution’ tag on these things is a bit misleading. You need some power source to drive the air compressors that fill up the tanks. So the pollution created will depend on how clean this power source is.

Looks like there’s still a lot of work to be done before we’re driving these things. But even so, it’s an engine driven by freakin’ air, man! All we need now is a car powered by giant balloons.

The iPod inside

The iPod has taken the music world by storm and is now THE mp3 player of choice in the consumer electronics business. What’s even more remarkable is that despite continually rising competition, the iPod still commands a massive (and very loyal) following.

What is it about the iPod that makes it such a tremendous success? Let’s see if we can break it down…

Hybrid Vehicles Made Easy

It’s all the rage: hybrid vehicles are being touted as the future of automotive transport. It’s easy to see why too: with the promise of environmentally-friendly operation and substantial fuel economy, there’s a lot of appeal in it.

And hey, let’s face it, the whole deal looks cool.

Automotive hybrid technology made history in the 1990s when the Honda Insight and Toyota Prius became available. A whole slew of commercial HVs followed, with several manufacturers coming up with HV models of their own.
So how exactly does an HV work?

Stuff that moves

I came across a very curious ad the other day. It was about a fellow named Theo Jansen, and he had made something quite remarkable.

It was BMW tv commercial, and though it had very little to do with the car itself, what was in the ad that caught my interest.

WTF is Mechatronics?

Seeing as how Mechatronics is still relatively unheard of in Pakistan, I encounter a lot of blank stares when I tell people about my field of study. I bet some may even think I’m making it all up.

Not that I can blame them.

Sure it sounds fancy but let’s face it, not everyone keeps up with current trends and advancements in highly specialized technical fields.

That’s why I’m going to try to de-mystify this funky-sounding, tongue-twisting, science-fictiony engineering voodoo.