IRAQ MAY SEE BOMBOTS
West Virginia High Technology Consortium Foundation (WVHTCF) staff member Rich Finley demonstrated the BomBot in November last year, at the Foundation's facilities in Fairmont, West Virginia. The US Navy will pay Innovative Responses Technologies, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the WVHTCF, US$9.6 million to build remote-controlled robots that can disable and destroy roadside bombs - a daily threat to troops in Iraq - cheaper than the ones now in use. The BomBot can be deployed quickly, without exposing its operator to danger, and was originally developed at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida.
TOSHIBA PLANS HIGH-SPEED ELEVATORS
Toshiba hopes to deploy the world's first elevators using high-speed Maglev technology as early as 2008, the company said last week. However, Toshiba Elevator and Building Systems said the lifts would initially travel 300 metres per minute - slower than the company's conventional lifts, which travel up to 1,010 metres per minute. The main improvements will come from greater comfort and noise reduction. Maglev technology is already being used in high-speed trains such as the passenger train that links Shanghai's Pudong International Airport to the city centre at speeds of 430km/h. The system uses electromagnetic force to suspend the train above a purpose-built track and propel it using a combination of magnetic attraction and repulsion.
SAFE AND SMART BICYCLES
A group of 28 small and medium-sized firms in Sakai, Japan have joined forces with researchers at Osaka Prefecture University to develop bicycles with automatic steering to prevent falls, according to a report in Mainichi Shimbun. The prototype 'smart cycles' are equipped with sensors that detect when the bicycle veers abnormally, after which the handlebars steer automatically in the opposite direction to return the bicycle to a balanced position. For safety reasons, the automatic correction function switches off when a certain amount of resisting force is applied to the handlebars. The developers hope to begin marketing the bicycle to elderly people in the coming months. 'It is a bicycle that is easy on elderly people,' a Sakai municipal government official told the newspaper. 'We want to use it to revitalise Sakai's manufacturing industry.' The industrial city of Sakai ships 40 per cent of Japan's bicycle-related goods.
