Live to Learn

#LLT

Yeah that's the new thing coming up from papsolutions, its Live To Learn

It’s about learning till you die. So why not learn something that’s the future is waiting for. In short, in this page we’ll cover all the new technologies that are up and running or expected to come and surprise us.

First we’ll see, the Electric Car thing aka Tesla Car, an innovation in automobile industry.

Tesla CAR/ The EV’s/ The Nissan Leaf:

First thing first, the electric car can be defined as two types. 1. Those are solely working on the electric stuff and 2. Those are a combined version of both electric components and the normal car parts.

We need not to get confused that the normal cars and the EVs don’t differ a lot, in fact, cars like Nissan Leaf, Tesla Model S, Ford Focus EV, HONDA Fit EV, and others operate in a way that would feel familiar with anyone accustomed to driving an automatic transmission car.

At the core, EVs powertrain is a battery, controller, and motor.

This intro itself makes us clear that EVs are the Future.

Let’s take a look in detail:

Battery:

EVs already had made their mark in in the early 20^th century. But, the batteries created at that time weren’t that powerful, in fact they were heavy as hell.

Let’s consider the TESLA MODEL S. Electricity charges a battery to give the car juice for a certain amount of time. Of course it’s not like your smartphone batteries that will drain away within hours, but they are somewhat similar to the lithium-ion batteries used in MacBook.

These batteries contain thousands of lithium-ion cells, and they have heck of power. To get the car roll, simply charge your batteries, sounds quite simple but it is that so. Like we charge our laptops by portable charger, the car battery is to be charged the same way. And that’s the key difference between the Hybrid Cars and the EVs, like Toyota Prius that is a hybrid that runs on gasoline structure and not by batteries that charge.

To recharge therefore, all EVs can plug into a 240volts socket, but it’s the slowest way. Even a mid sized 16kwh battery can take 20hrs to charge. Thus, while some people have been able to get by this, others may use customized power supplies called EVSE “Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment”

Batteries also require a built in software to regulate discharge and charge. This is to prevent the batteries from getting overcharged.

Why need such huge batteries?

The answer is quite straightforward, they are required to run the Watermelon sized big Motors that convert electrical energy to mechanical and vice versa.

The EVs propulsion motor is called “Traction Motor”. EV makers have decided to go for AC induction or AC permanent magnet motors which provide high torque, reliable operation and light weight.

The cylindrical motor consists of a stator which is fixed stationary, and receives alternating (AC) current to create a magnetic field. Inside the stator is a rotor, which spins on an output shaft. It takes the twisting power and turns a gear that is then routed mechanically to the wheel axle

Also, EVs motor does not only propels, it also recharges and thus known as Motor Generator. This is where Regenerative Braking comes in- upon deceleration, the motor serves as a generator to send current back to the battery, this is an advantage no internal combustion engine car has.

Some companies may have more than one motors, so the EVs have a much powerful motor structure than any other car.

Rather, electric motors have 100-percent of their torque ready from the get go, while horsepower does increase then tapers off as speeds increase.

Controller:

The unit that joints the Battery and the motor.

We could have a controller instead of a processor in the new EV models like TESLA Model S. To control the controller, you have an accelerator pedal which does the same job as a gas pedal in an internal combustion engine car. This effectively acts like a rheostat on dimmable lights in your home.

The pedal is attached to a type of resistor called a potentiometer and the net result is it sends a small amount of electric current variably and progressively to the controller. The controller is thus instructed how much current in turn to provide from the batteries to the motor. It actually sends pulses of power from transistors, and not one steady flow. These pulses are in the realm of 15,000 per second or more or less

So what about the Gear System/ Power Train? 

Single-Geared!!!

Surprised? But that’s how it is, the EVs are single gear cars, because they have so much torque that an EV can utilize a simple reduction gear with a single ratio that’s easy enough to get rolling suitably quick, and tall enough to let the car hit highway speeds.

Even Tesla’s mighty 130 mph Model S operates through a single speed fixed gear

Counterexamples can be seen such as the Porsche Panamera S E-Hybrid, a plug-in hybrid that can work all-electrically. It operates all-electrically through its eight-speed manually over-rid able automatic transmission just as it does when its gas power is on.

So, that’s all about the EVs hope you like it!! So, whenever someone asks you about the electric cars ( and they would ask you definitely if you are an engineer), then don’t forget to tell them what you just learned !!!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After going hrough the EVs let's learn about CRICKET !! Yeah you read it right, cricket, I'm not saying about Sachin and Yuvraj but about the technological growth in cricket. What we will see today is the most innovative concept in modern cricket.

Ever had a question how the hawk-eye predicts such perfect results? It’s the technology behind it that makes it powerful. And as engineers we should know what actually works behind such a technology.

After googling a bit, we found out that Hawk-Eye was first developed by the Roke Manor Research group. So, first to define hawk-eye we can state that, it is a computer system that tracks the ball and display a record of its most statistically likely path as a moving image.

Also, do you know that Hawk-Eye has been bought by Sony and that it’s not officially used by the ICC? Yeah, it’s quite surprising, but that’s exactly what the official Hawk-Eye website says

Basically, Hawk-Eye works on a technology called TRIANGULATION. (yeah, the topic that we have in Robotics, and we left it ;)

Wiki defines, Triangulation is the process of determining the location of a point by measuring angles to it from known points at either end of a fixed baseline.

CV is different to image processing. It uses captured images to infer information about the physical environment around us. It’s central to robotics and to road speed camera

It uses 6 high speed vision processing cameras and 2 broadcast cameras. Whenever a bowler balls a ball, the position of the ball recorded by each of the 6 cameras is combined to form a virtual 3D positioning of the ball. While the 2 broadcast cameras are used to find the length and distance of the delivery 

The hawk-eye takes 2 inputs one being from the 6 cameras and other the speed of the ball.

The whole process of the delivery is broken into two parts, delivery to bounce and bounce to impact. 

Multiple frames of the ball position are measured and through this, you can calculate the direction, speed, swing and dip of that specific delivery.

So, it must have a high speed video processor (e.g. could be a DSP processor), the images from the live feeds of the 6 cameras are fed to this processor, and a data memory to store the data that is collected from the live feed.

Identify in each frame ,from each camera and do grouping of pixels to form a 2D image

Now, what we need is a 3D position of the image form, so we convert this 2D image to 3D image computed in the successive frames.

Once the ball position in known, simple the processor predicts the ball flight from the origin frame and comparing it with the successive frames the ball trajectory is plotted.

Once everything is calculated. The final trajectory is modelled with different characteristics and the hawk-eye image is plotted.

Also in the memory storage we have a algorithm of the desired set of rules that will give the final call of 

the hawk-eye image, for example in LBW decision the set of rules like where the ball has pitched, where it strikes the pad and its path to hit the stumps are compared with the live hawk-eye image to give correct decisions.

Not only LBW decision carry hawk-eye has their backbone technology, using the same above technique has base we have other features in cricket as follows:

Wagon wheels

De spin – simply calculates the angle deviation between the 2 trajectories and gives the deviation

Pitch map

Beehives

Ball speed

Reaction time

All the above are features of the Hawk-Eye system

That’s how the hawk-eye works. So, whenever you are watching cricket and your friends seem to be amazed by the hawk-eye decisions, just don’t miss this chance to show what you’ve got :)  Share and learn more!!

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Google, a company we all have been admiring for years because of its “Search Engine” has now come out with a great innovative idea in the field of R&D engineering. The ATAP team of Google is working on a fantastic project named “Project Soli”.

It’s so fantastic that we could not control writing a post on it.

 It’s basically a motion detection project, but on a larger and complex scale. We have also done projects using image procession (MATLAB) to recognize the hand movements and control objects (BOT), but Google takes it to a different level. What we used to have is a camera that captures the images of physical movements and then a system that analyses it and produce required actions/outputs.

What google is doing in Project Soli is that it’s using a technique called RADAR.

Researchers at Google observed that the movements of our fingers depict many physical action that can be considered as some kind of operation, for example, tapping 2 fingers could just depict closing of a switch, sliding the index finger over the thumb can look as controlling the volume bar of a music player and so on.

We already have apps that recognizes finger motions and unlock screen but soli is way too good from this. Google I/O defines Soli has a sensor device that uses Radar technology that is capable of tracking sub-millimeter motions at high speed and accuracy.

When Google started this project the device size was around a small size pizza box, but in just 10 months it is now smaller than a coin, yup that’s GOOGLE!!!!

So, what’s Radar, it’s the normal radar waves that are transmitted by any transmitter. But, what differs is Soli uses a Transmitter-Receiver that does not concentrate on single point for reception but a range of receiver points. That means, the transmitter will transmit waves this will coincide with the hand motions and the receiver will get changes at each point of transmitted wave. The ATAP team has found out that there are specific changes in the radar waves for specific hand motions. That’s all, this simple looking concept is used by Soli to get gesture based applications.

Technical specifications are not yet opened by google, but what we know is that it works at 60 Ghz radar spectrum with a refresh rate of 10,000 frames per second.

Currently Google has only made it unveiled through a video at YouTube, but its further plans are opening this 

Project to developers around the Globe so as this Soli can be applied to various devices and create an innovation in each and every field.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QNiZfSsPc0 – follow here and do watch PROJECT SOLI!!

That’s all for today, it will seem that this technology is way complex to understand a few paras, but something less than nothing is always good. Do read and always keep up with GOOGLE  :)