Energy Transformation and Usage

The way that it uses energy is the main success factor in Hybrid Electric Vehicles. It goes in as few steps which mentioned below.

• Start: it take the first move with electric motor. Only when vehicle started moving it ignites the fossil fuel engine. This saves lots of fossil fuel in many ways. Primarily, it saves fuel required to initial acceleration. Then it start ignition while engines components are moving and that will save lots of startup energy required, again saves fuel.

• Accelerate: When the vehicle is moving at a normal speed, it starts giving more fuel power. This will result it smooth initial acceleration which will add extra color to vehicle other than fuel consumption.  When the vehicle required more power and need more acceleration transmission will gradually give more weight to fuel engine automatically.

• High Speeds: When the vehicle is moving in a good speed, may be in a motorway, the transmission lean more toward fuel engine. In such a situation, very less amount of fuel needs to be burned to keep the speed. Further, most of the hybrid vehicles are designed very carefully to gain maximum advantage from aerodynamics.

• Braking: Generally braking will transform kinetic energy to thermal energy and potential energy in front suspension. In other words it takes the entire power off the vehicles to stop it. But, hybrid vehicles are having a generator. Whenever vehicle breaks, it comes to picture and transforms kinetic energy back to electrical energy, then store in batteries. That’s how most of the hybrid vehicles do great millage in city stop-n-go type driving conditions.

• Stopping: When you ready to stop the vehicles and once you reach a certain lower speed, it completely shut down fuel engine. Again it stops while it’s moving and it saves significant amount of fuel which might come out from exhaust, might be half burnt.  Other than fuel saving, it will give a smooth stop and parking again adds color to vehicle and delivers excellent comfortable driving experience.

Advantages

Drive Green

The main attraction in hybrid vehicles is their lesser environmental impact. They emit carbon approximately 40% lower than a traditional internal combustion engine which is really great. And we are dealing with millions of motor cars, so even a smaller change will be reflected big in the long run. However, the contribution from the Hybrid Electric vehicles is huge and significant. When there is increased number of them on the roads, we will feel the difference very clearly. Additionally, they generate much lesser noise than traditional internal combustion engine and that also could be considered as major contribution to ‘Live green’ concept. In near future our roads will be much lesser nosier than they are now, thanks to Hybrid electric vehicles.

Lesser Fuel Consumption

Then comes, the next major factor which is fuel consumption level. No matter how environmentalist try to make people see, what we are doing to environment and how it will back fire on us, There are very few people who understand that and try to contribute to make a change. But, we have limited fossil fuel supply. At this rate it won’t even last for, no more than 100 years. That will hit every one, affect every one unlike the environmental impact, it’s clearly accountable, in numbers. Hybrid vehicles will be our savior in there as well. As long as they consume fuel almost half of general internal combustion engine, we will have fossil fuel for significant number of more years which is cool. After all it will be good for your pocket as well!

Smooth Driving Experience

Hybrid vehicles give more, but take less. It’s not just about carbon emission, live green etc. It will give you better comfortable driving experience as well. Unlike in traditional internal combustion engines, these are not totally based on pistons. Most of the situations, they will be powered by motor as well as Fuel. So obviously, engine vibration will be lesser. If you drive only with motor, when you just start the car and going to park, there will be almost no noise or vibrations. Other than that most of the latest hybrid cars are good with aerodynamics, so it will add extra comfort to high speed drives.

Market Statistics

Toyota Prius with a Power Split hybrid engine is the top selling hybrid Electric car in US and Japan. It reached global 2 million sales by 2010. The second most selling hybrid car is Honda Civic powered with parallel hybrid engine. They hit 300,000 units’ sales in 2010. Ford also in the picture and they have done around 150, 000 units by 2010. As you can see, Toyota is leading the game and way ahead from all the others.

When it comes to countries Japan is the country that uses most number of Hybrid vehicles by 2010. Almost half of the worlds’ hybrid cars are in Japan. Then comes USA and they have approximately 40% of world Hybrid cars.

Recently most of the countries reduce or totally remove import taxes for Hybrid vehicles having the objective of motivate people to buy them to protect environment as well as save fossil fuel. This huge demand made a direct impact to car auction in Japan mainly. The car prices went up rapidly by nearly 50% in last 6 months. This trend is more likely to continue for some time. At the same time manufactures are continuously introducing new models with latest technological advancements.

Future Development

Future of hybrid cars is very important, to entire human civilization. It saves the main source of power which was using for centuries to empower most of our technological advancements. Most probably, human technology will be focused on sustainable energy in future. As a sign, latest Hybrid cars are having solar panel to recharge the batteries.

In Hybrid Electric vehicle development, scientists are trying different types of fuels. BMW has already proved that diesel is better than gasolier in hybrid engines. So Diesel hybrid could be a next big trend. Other than that people are looking in to cleaner energy like Hydrogen. In that case it could be used to generate electricity using Hydrogen fuel cell as well as in an internal combustion engine.  Once technology develops to generate Hydrogen with lesser cost, we will be able to say good bye to ‘Fossil fuel’ with these advancement of Hybrid vehicles.

Major environmental impact which led world weather condition to this state is ‘Carbon Emission’ Most of the developed countries emit scary amount of carbon per year, with their industrial machinery. Not just that, entire countries emit massive amount of carbon every day as a result of transportation based of fossil fuel. There were lots of global concepts came to picture to minimize these environmental impact, like ‘carbon trading’ but none succeeded since there were lesser support from world’s biggest carbon emitting countries.

Even though we don’t mind emitting carbon, fossil fuel are very limited and the regeneration process will take centuries. At the current state we are burning them in a rate which might be many 1000s times greater than their regeneration. So we are in a mission to save fossil fuel as well as the environment.

Hybrid car technology is an angel came to save the world environment and entire human civilization by minimizing carbon emission in transpiration mechanisms. The name hybrid came since those engines are using two types of energy sources. They were using in industry machinery, Ari crafts, naval vehicles, heavy transportation vehicles as well as domestic vehicles. The Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEV) became popular with domestic vehicles and became an exponential trend in past few years.

Bit of History

The concept of hybrid vehicle was there in the academic world for so long. But, proposed mechanisms were too complex to implement and no good enough for domestic usage. When it comes to Hybrid Electric Vehicles, the major concern was its battery. It was too costly to replace and most of the cases not capable of holding enough power for decent long distance drive.

Technology continues to evolve for decades and as a result Japan produced world’s very first Hybrid Electric vehicle which was Toyota Prius back in 1997. Then Honda also came to the competition with their Civic in 1999. Those vehicles were having great fuel consumption as good as 50 MPG even in that time. However, there were performance issues as well as major issues with batteries.

Lots of vehicle manufactures came in to the competition, yet Toyota and Honda was the leading top sellers all the time. There was very advanced technologies introduced by Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, but they didn’t go much in to pubic manly due to their high cost. Most of the above mentioned issues were resolved and in 2004 there was 200, 000 Hybrid car sales in USA and in 2010 it went up to 1, 800, 000 displaying its great success.

Types of Hybrid Engines

Parallel Hybrid Engines

In these engines both the internal combustion engine and Electric motor is connected to transmission. Vehicle may be using internal combustion engine or power of electric power to depending on driving condition. Sometimes it might use the both. It uses regenerative braking to transform kinetic energy back to electric energy. Further they are capable of generate power from internal combustion engine and store them in batteries. Most of the case those vehicles are having smaller motor and batteries since they are not suppose to drive only with motor. They perform good in highways as well as city drives in traffic.

Series Hybrid Engine

They uses internal combustion engine only to generate power and store them in a battery. The drive will be only powered by batteries and deliver maximum comfortable smooth drive. They have smaller internal combustion engine and bigger battery and motor, you can guess why. They also support regenerative braking, so do well in city driving in traffic. However, they come with greater market price due to their bigger motor and battery.

Power Split Hybrid Engine

This is the most popular and most balanced type of hybrid engine. The magic is they can drive with motor and internal combustion engine, either, both or proportionality like in parallel hybrid. Yet, they can generate power from internal combustion engine and drive with only motor as well, like Series hybrid. Hence, they can select the most efficient mechanism depending on driving conditions. As an example, they can switch to parallel mode in high speeds since they are good with high speeds. And they can go to series mode, in low speed as well. Plus, they have regenerative breaks like in other models.

Obviously, this must be having average, size internal combustion engine as well as a battery and motor. They come with average price, higher than pure parallel engines, yet much lower than pure series engines. The top selling Hybrid car in the world, which is Toyota Prius is powered with a power split Hybrid engine, and now you can see why it became the top selling car.

Engine Components

Internal Combustion Engine

This is traditional type of internal combustion engine which transforms fossil fuel in to kinetic energy using pistons. They empowered our autos for century and still there in hybrid engines as well. However, in this application they will be using in very optimum way, burning minimum amount of fossil fuel. They are used to generate electric power and drive in high speed.

Electric Motor

Electric motor power mainly in low speed drives and yet supports the internal combustion engine in acceleration in high speed drives. It converts electric energy in batteries to kinetic energy, then transfer them to vehicle through its transmission. Some of the Hybrid cars provide a ‘Zero Emission Mode’ which driver can select only the electric motor to power up the drive. This might be useful to drive your car in to ‘No Carbon Emission Zones’.

Generator

This is one of the magical concepts in hybrid engines. Generally, when braking, the kinetic energy in vehicle will be taken out as thermal energy and potential energy in suspension. But, hybrid engines can’t just waste energy like that. It uses this generator to convert the kinetic energy back to electric energy when braking and store them back on batteries. This called as ‘Regenerative Braking’.

Fuel Tank and Batteries

As usual, same as in traditional cars fuel tank will provide required fuel type to internal combustion engine. The battery pack will be there to power up electric motor whenever it required. Additionally, internal combustion engine may be recharging batteries. Plus, regenerative braking also will be re charging batteries when the vehicle brakes.

Transmission

The transmission has to be very special and somewhat complex since it has to handle two source of power. Basically it uses general transmission mechanism with clutch and all. Yet, it will be using variable transmission ratio to make it more efficient and cope up with different driving conditions, by selecting optimum source of energy for the situation. However, in the Parallel and series hybrid vehicles, transmission will be much similar to traditional transmission, yet in Power split hybrid must have much more complex mechanism, in order to select the optimum power source as well as power ratio.

Solar Panels

This is anotehr magical concepts in Hybrid Electric vehicles. Most of the time vehicle will be driving and parking in broad day light and why not convert it in to electric energy and store in batteries. In order to do that some special version of HEVs are having Solar panels, mostly in sun roof and rear windscreen. They are suppose to pump more electric power to batteries which will definitely lead to less carbon fuel burning,

Continue to Part 2…

History

Steve Mann is the father of SixthSense who made a wearable computer in 1990. The SixthSense technology was first implemented as the neckworn projector+ camera system. He was a media lab student at that time. There after it was used and implemented by an Indian who is the man has become very famous in the recent Pranav Mistry. There will be a long future rather than the short period of history for the SixthSense technology.

Development

Software

Pranav Mistry says the SixthSense software will be open source. As far as this seems to be a little set of items, there will not be user interfaces or much advanced programs for the users. There will be much harder and secured coding inside the device to make sure the security of the software. It will be interesting to know the new language for coding for a sixthsense device.

Hardware

In order to control the SixthSense, it requires some advance hardware as it appears to be. In some of the public presentations, the presenter was wearing some controlling devices including color markers, Camera and projector. When the product come to the real market there has to be lot of improvement for these hardware. They has to be compact and easily controllable. How ever the hardware integration of SixthSense technology is quite innovative since they have manage to develop camera and pen like day to day objects.

Applications

In Pranav Mistry’s demonstration, he showed several applications that can be made using the SixthSense technology. It would be a great achievement for the Information Technology as well. Since it is the beginning of the SixthSense applications, there will be lot of tough problems ahead the SixthSense application developers.

Motion Capture

The innovative camera is something that got applauds of the crowd in the demonstration. Four rubber rings in the four fingers two in each can be used do draw a rectangular. It will be the area covered by the photograph. Then the photos can be taken to any interface for editing, managing the galleries and sharing. This is much controversial. There is an inbuilt storage device where the data can be stored. When using a surface, the whole data is taken into that surface and stored in the device after the editing. The data can be hacked during the editing period. That is a serious issue in this camera application. And also the capturing device being so small like 4 rubber rings can be used to capture the photos of any location.

There are so many new applications to be developed in the near future. A remote controller for media devices can be implemented to be worked with fingers using this technology. Except having the remote controller to send fast forward, rewind or next or previous options, a SixthSense device can be used. The current process of sending fast-forward or rewind with advanced options. For example, using 2 fingers to send 5 seconds, 3 fingers to send 10 seconds likewise it can be done.

Many games can be made using this technology. A car race using an imaginary steering wheel will be an attractive application. The player will have to drive the vehicle as a real one using his arms. The SixthSense tool kit will be a good replacement for the XBOX game kit and it will not be much expensive as it is said.

3D Drawing

A pencil that enables users to draw in 3D is good innovation. It will be a good tool for the beginners to the 3D modeling world. Also it will help a lot for the engineers as well. Another implementation is the physical Google map. It provides the all data that is provided by the Google. The map available on a surface and when you keep something in it, it detects the place where the options available. Dragging and dropping hardcopies to the computer will be a good and efficient replacement for the scanner. This is much more advanced because this can take 3D objects as it appears.

Future Development

It seems to be that there can be a good future for SixthSense technology applications. There are several things that designers must pay their attention. The digital cameras came into the market with a promising call. But it did not provide the real quality for the photographers at a reasonable price. Therefore most of the professional photographers still use the analog cameras. Nano technology came into the world, but the general consumers do not use that technology so far. The reason is the extremely high price. SixthSense devices are very much different from the computers, this will be a new topic for the hackers and the other people also. First thing is to provide the security for the SixthSense applications and devices. Lot of good technologies came and died due to the security threats. There are some weaknesses that can reduce the accuracy of the data. Some of them were the on palm phone keypad. It allows the user to dial a number of the phone using the keypad available on the palm. As far as the palms are different, there will be some problems regarding some issues such like the sensitivity, and several other facts. Also 3^rd party attacks can be possible.

In addition to that Microsoft is developing a controlling environment whore the user doesn’t even have to touch the controller device named ‘Project Natal’. This will be a significant market competitor to the SixthSense technology since it still required some hardware involvement with the user.

References

• TED. (2009, 11). Pranav Mistry: The thrilling potential of SixthSense technology. Retrieved 05 22, 2010, from TED: http://www.ted.com/talks/pranav_mistry_the_thrilling_potential_of_sixthsense_technology.html

Development

The film Avatar had been in development since 1994 bye James Cameron, who wrote an 80-page script for the film in two weeks. Cameron has stated that “every single science fiction book I read as a kid”. He announced about filming the Avatar after completing the Titanic. From January to April 2006, Cameron worked on the script with Dr. Paul Former, who developed the Na’vi language and culture. The budget for the film is $237 million, with $150 million for promotion. Most of the live action scenes were shot in Wellington, New Zealand on sets constructed by a massive team of 150 contractors.

The Technology

Performance Capture

Cameron first introduced the motion capture technology in Total Recall, with the first CGI human movements. But this had some limitations, in particular the actor of the character being portrayed. Moreover, the actor’s expressions cannot capture with this technology. CGI is traditionally done by placing reflective markers all over an actor’s face and body, which are then interpreted by computer technology to create digitized expressions for CG characters. Cameron and his team developed a new image-based facial performance capture technology, requiring the actor to wear special headgear rig equipped with a camera, which is placed inches from their face to capture and digitalize every muscle contraction or expression.

Animation

The digital animations have done by the Weta Digital in New Zealand, which has owned by Peter Jackson. They’ve transferred basic renderings into photo-real images, using lighting, shading and rendering. The realism was extended to each leaf, tree, plant and rock, which were rendered in WETA computers. In addition, a team of artists designed the props and weapons for the Na’vi and humans. These digital designs have taken to complete over one year of time.

Stereoscopic 3D Fusion Camera

The production partner Vince Pace and James Cameron developed this camera system. This camera was used to bridge up the gaps between the scenes and artistically formed an untraceable connectivity between the live action and the computer-generated scenes.

Virtual Camera/Simul-Cam Technology

The combination of the Virtual Camera and the Simul-Cam gave the best features of the 3D and the CGI technologies for Avatar. The Virtual Camera simulated a camera that was fed CG images by supercomputer surrounding the volume. This allowed amplification of each small adjustment on the virtual production stage, from camera movement to actor interaction. The simul-cam fed, in integrated real-time, CG characters and environments into the live action Fusion 3D camera eyepiece, allowing the director to direct virtual scenes on Pandora the same way he would a live-action scene.

The Software Used In The Making Of Avatar

There are many companies and their software product has involved in the development of the film Avatar. The company list has given below.

• Industrial Light and Magic, USA (most of the character design, modeling and effects)
• Weta Digital, New Zealand (most of the character design, modeling and effects)
• Stan Winston Studios (most of the props, including the AMP suit)
• Framestore, UK (Sully’s arrival at Hell’s Gate and two other shots)
• Hybride, Canada
• Prime Focus, USA – Frantic Films is mentioned for the same thing but not officially credited – (design and compositing of the control room screens, HUDs, etc)
• Look Effects, USA (compositing)
• Hydraulx, USA
• Giant Studios, USA (motion capture)
• Blur, USA (space shots of ISV Venture Star)
• Pixel Liberation Front, USA (screens and HUD design)
• Lola VFX, USA (digital cosmetic)

The Main Software Used Has Given Below

• Autodesk Maya
• Pixar Renderman for Maya
• Autodesk SoftImage XSI
• Luxology Modo (model desing)
• Autodesk 3ds max (space shots, control room screens and HUD renderings)
• Autodesk MotionBuilder (for real time 3d visualisatons)
• The Foundry Nuke Compositor (image compositing)
• Autodesk Smoke (color correction)
• Autodesk Combustion (compositing)
• AVID (video editing)
• Adobe After Effects (compositing, real-time visualizations)
• PF Track (motion tracking, background replacement)
• Adobe Illustrator (HUD and screens layout)
• Adobe Photoshop (concept art, textures)
• Adobe Premiere (proofing, rough composition with AE)
• Many tools developed in-house
• Plug-ins for each platform

Avatar made a big revolution in the 3D and Sci-Fi films. Moreover, the film was a big success.

References

• (n.d). Retrieved on 2010, January from scriptphd.com: http://www.scriptphd.com/?p=1257
• (n.d). Retrieved on 2010, January from twin-pixels.com: http://www.twin-pixels.com/software-used-making-of-avatar/
• (n.d). Retrieved on 2010, January from scienceprog.com: http://www.scienceprog.com/technologies-used-in-avatar-movie/
• (n.d). Retrieved on 2010, January from twin-pixels.com: http://www.twin-pixels.com/wp-content/uploads/4054882656_1b4c62a3cb.jpg