Lifeboat Foundation

One of the best thing about electric and hybrid vehicles is that the energy doesn’t get completely wasted when you need to brake. By using an electric motor as a generator, you can slow a vehicle down and put some of that kinetic energy into a battery pack so you can use it again later. Sure, there are conversion losses both going into the battery and coming back out to the wheels, so you don’t get a lot more than half of the energy back, but an ICE vehicle turns all of that energy into heat, which gets dissipated into the air.

Electric bikes, scooters, and other micromobility options can do regenerative braking, too. This is great for getting better range and doing fewer brake jobs, just like in a car.

Continue reading “Regenerative Braking & Energy Storage Without Batteries? Hobbyists Are Figuring It Out” »

BayWa r.e., in partnership with Grüne Energien, has received planning permission for the development of the Rag Lane Solar Farm project near Bristol, UK.

Construction of the 49.9 MW solar project in South Gloucestershire is planned to commence at the beginning of 2023, with grid connection expected in the second half of 2023. When complete, Rag Lane will deliver approximately 52 GWh/year of clean renewable electricity for distribution to the national grid, the equivalent to the annual electrical needs of approximately 15,000 family homes.

BayWa r.e. is committed to ensuring maximum benefit to the local community and environment in the development of Rag Lane. As part of the construction of the project, BayWa r.e. will provide biodiversity enhancements to the local area including the reinforcement and planting of 1.7 km of new hedgerows as a haven for wildlife, as well as ecological connectivity and improvements to the public footpath that runs across the site.

Continue reading “49.9 MW solar farm with biodiversity enhancements” »

Top futurologist Marian Salzman tells us her predictions for 2022 with robots stealing our jobs, political upheaval, hybrid schooling, angst and electronic pets.

The largest solar project in Kentucky will be built on an abandoned coal mine in Martin County and provide jobs for former coal workers.

2.7 billion people on this planet have “deskless jobs,” many of which require bending, lifting, moving, and carrying. German Bionic just released the fifth generation Cray X AI-enhanced power suit, or exoskeleton, to help those billions of people with almost 70 pounds of additional lifting capacity, reducing the risk of back injury and repetitive stress injuries. The Cray X is already in use at BMW, IKEA, and the French delivery service DPD, and will be launched internationally in January 2022.

The AI-powered suit boosts productivity, reduces error rates, decreases accidents, and results in a 25% reduction in the number of sick days workers take, German Bionic says.

The smart exoskeleton market has been estimated to be growing 41.3% a year to a nearly $2 billion industry by 2025, with applications in construction, shipping and receiving, healthcare, and the military. But it’s not just for the billions in the workforce.

A robot avatar that mimics the motions of a human controller could take the place of workers in several dangerous jobs, such as tree trimming and construction, by the end of 2022.

The challenge: If a tree branch gets too close to a power line, it can cause electrical outages or, even worse, dangerous fires (as Californians know all too well). To avoid this, utility companies have to regularly trim trees near their lines.

Continue reading “Robot avatar safely trims trees around active power lines” »

“If you’re working on something that involves people or engineering, it’s probably a good focus for your future,” Musk.

Elon Musk has made many predictions about the future of society and the role that his companies Tesla and SpaceX will play. The millionaire has very strong opinions and is not afraid to express them in interviews, conferences, and even on social networks. This time, he spoke about the impact that Artificial Intelligence will have on the jobs of the future and mentioned the careers that will be safe. to the tech mogul, the essentials will be engineering and human-interactive careers.

As workers move around, forecasters predict additional jobs will continue to open up in the new year, giving job-switchers even more opportunities to choose from, says Julia Pollak, chief economist with the job-search site ZipRecruiter.

“We’ve seen substantial job growth in recent months, all taking place without the labor force participation rate changing,” Pollak tells CNBC Make It. She says it’s “an exciting moment for job seekers who are benefiting from employers offering hiring incentives and reducing their requirements” to fill a sharply rising number of vacancies.

Here are three reasons why Pollak believes workers will continue to have their pick of jobs in 2022, and what it will take for more Americans to rejoin the labor force.

One of the most important issues in contemporary societies is the impact of automation and intelligent technologies on human work. Concerns with the impact of mechanization on jobs and unemployment go back centuries, at least since the late 1,500 ’ s, when Queen Elizabeth I turned down William Lee ’ s patent applications for an automated knitting machine for stockings because of fears that it might turn human knitters into paupers. ^[2] In 1936, an automotive industry manager at General Motors named D.L. Harder coined the term “automation” to refer to the automatic operation of machines in a factory setting. Ten years later, when he was a Vice President at Ford Motor company, he established an “Automation Department” which led to widespread usage of the term. ^[3]

The origins of intelligent automation trace back to US and British advances in fire-control radar for operating anti-aircraft guns to defend against German V-1 rockets and aircraft during World War II. After the war, these advances motivated the MIT mathematician Norbert Weiner to develop the concept of “cybernetics”, a theory of machines and their potential based on feedback loops, self-stabilizing systems, and the ability to autonomously lean and adapt behavior. ^[4] In parallel, the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence workshop was held in 1956 and is recognized as the founding event of artificial intelligence as a research field. ^[5]

Since that decade, workplace automation, cybernetic-inspired advanced feedback systems for both analogue and digital machines, and digital computing based artificial intelligence (together with the overall field of computer science) have advanced in parallel and co-mingled with one another. Additionally, opposing views of these developments have co-existed with one side highlighting the positive potential for more capable and intelligent machines to serve, benefit and elevate humanity, and the other side highlighting the negative possibilities and threats including mass unemployment, physical harm and loss of control. There has been a steady stream of studies from the 1950 ’ s to the present assessing the impacts of machine automation on the nature of work, jobs and employment, with each more recent study considering the capability enhancements of the newest generation of automated machines.