As mechanical designers in the engineering field with a background in the manufacturing sector we are driven to find efficiencies wherever we can – be it in terms of looking for cost and time savings in the manufacturing process, minimising the use of materials in the manufacture, improved energy and power efficiencies during use or giving consideration
There has been a lot of column inches dedicated to the subject of driverless cars in recent months as trials on UK roads have got under way. Less, however, has been written about autonomous transport of another kind – namely driverless boats. It would seem a no-brainer that if the technology is almost here to
There are thousands of examples of how nature has guided technological development throughout human history. No-one did more to pioneer this approach than the great Leonardo himself who used detailed studies of nature, anatomy and biology to invent incredible machines such as his “Mechanical Dragonfly”, “Great Kite”, “Flying Machine” or “Glider”. Although some 500 years have
So, the government has announced we will see driverless cars on British roads in the New Year. Four cities and towns – Bristol, Milton Keynes, Coventry and Greenwich in south London – are to be testing grounds for so called ‘autonomous vehicles’ from January 1 to enable innovators to gain a greater understanding of this
When I think back to when I started in engineering my first PC had 512k of RAM and no hard drive at all but two 360k floppy drives. Incredibly when the machine was built there was obviously no requirement envisaged for a hard drive. Shortly after I bought a 20Mb “hard card” and so started