• Ocado unveils ‘game-changing’ innovations to ramp up grocery initiatives

    According to the Ocado Group, the technologies announced will collectively mean that its OSP partners will meet the full range of customer missions faster and with lower operating costs; enable short lead-time deliveries for a larger proportion of sales, and drive a faster speed to market. The company described the initiative as an “evolution” of OSP and will be one of the most significant steps forward in technology in Ocado’s history. They said it will also re-affirm OSP as the fastest, most flexible, most sustainable and most cost-effective suite of solutions for operating online grocery businesses. “These new capabilities will propel the entire online grocery market forward across different missions, and will enable our partners to take a greater share of the grocery market thanks to…

  • Bentley to make its first electric car in Crewe for 2025 release

    The UK-based carmaker, which is now a subsidiary of Volkswagen (VW), said that its first electric vehicles are expected to roll off production lines in about three years’ time. The firm said its approach will make Bentley exclusively electric and end-to-end carbon neutral by 2030, a full 20 years ahead of the same ambition from its parent company VW. In fiscal year 2019, Bentley manufactured just 12,430 vehicles compared to 11 million from VW. Bentley will also commit £2.5bn to sustainability initiatives over the next decade. The announcement helps secure Bentley’s first step into electrification at the production plant, where around 4,000 people are employed and all Bentley models are built. The investment programme will result in a complete transformation of Bentley’s entire product…

  • Carmakers should be responsible for driverless offences, Law Commission says

    The Law Commission of England and Wales and the Scottish Law Commission have published joint report making recommendations for the safe and responsible introduction of self-driving vehicles. It suggests the creation of a new Automated Vehicles Act which regulates vehicles that can drive themselves and creates a clear distinction between features which just assist drivers, such as adaptive cruise control, and those that are self-driving. Under the Law Commissions’ proposals, when a car is authorised by a regulatory agency as having “self-driving features” and those features are in use, the person in the driving seat would no longer be responsible for how the car drives. Instead, the company or body that obtained the authorisation would face regulatory sanctions if anything goes wrong.…

  • Egg yolks and human hairs handled with care by delicate robotic grippers

    The work draws on the Japanese art of kirigami – a variation on the more well-known art of origami paper-folding – which involves both cutting and folding two-dimensional (2D) sheets of material to form three-dimensional (3D) shapes. Specifically, the researchers have developed a new technique that involves using kirigami to convert 2D sheets into curved 3D structures by cutting parallel slits across much of the material. The final shape of the 3D structure is determined in large part by the outer boundary of the material. For example, a 2D material that has a circular boundary would form a spherical 3D shape. “We have defined and demonstrated a model that allows users to work backwards,” said Yaoye Hong, first author of a paper on the work and a PhD student at NC State. “If users know…

  • EV infrastructure roll-out reveals huge regional variations due to funding gaps

    According to data published by the Department for Transport (DfT) last week, 7,600 new charger installations were added to the UK’s network last year, taking the total to 28,375 public plug-in points. Since the figures were last updated in October 2021, an additional 2,448 charging points were installed, marking a 9 per cent increase. However, the DfT acknowledged that there was an “uneven geographical distribution of charging devices within the UK”. For example, in London - as of January 1 2022 - there were 102 public charging devices per 100,000 people, while in the North West there were just 24 charging devices per 100,000 people. Scotland had the second-highest level of charging provision with 52 devices per 100,000 and Northern Ireland had the lowest level in the UK with just 18…

  • Installing heat pumps into homes should be a priority this decade, report suggests

    Ministers have set out plans to roll out 600,000 heat pumps, a low-carbon alternative to gas boilers, per year by 2028, and develop hydrogen supplies, which are also being touted as an option for cutting climate emissions from home heating systems currently run on natural gas. But a report from Imperial College London’s Energy Futures Lab said it was likely that using hydrogen as an energy source in the gas grid would only be workable from the early to mid-2030s, at the earliest. With tough climate goals to cut emissions within the decade, the research calls for a focus on making UK homes more efficient, electrifying domestic heating through heat pumps, and deploying heat networks in the next 10 years. The report was commissioned by the MCS Charitable Foundation, which aims to drive the…

  • When cutting costs on defending your networks isn’t an option

    Access-management and authentication processes are a necessity in any modern enterprise in almost every industry on Earth. The information held within a corporate network is valuable enough that nefarious actors will continue to target it mercilessly. The ability to properly protect these assets is the difference between a strong, compliant organisation and one that ends up hauled in front of a regulatory board to answer for its failings. For the gas and oil industries, secure authentication can be an even more serious consideration. For as long as gas and oil have been important commodities on the global stage, they have been political footballs to be kicked around. An appropriate security posture is not just important for safety, security and prosperity, but is also an important way for…

  • Electricity costs could rise by a quarter in move to net zero

    The global effort to reach net zero carbon by 2050, not just limited to the energy sector, is expected to cost around $9.2tr (£6.7tr) annually, equivalent to one-quarter of total tax revenue or half of global corporate profits, the report entitled 'The Net Zero Transition' has found. This figure represents an annual increase of as much as $3.5tr from today’s levels as well as an additional $1tr of current annual spend that would need to be reallocated from high-emissions to low-emissions assets. Governments are facing increasing pressure to announce more stringent policies to tackle climate change in order to provide a pathway for the world to stick below 2°C global warming. Last year, researchers found that even though some of the world’s most polluting countries have made stronger climate…

  • Almost all e-waste in Latin America is ‘improperly managed’, says UN report

    According to the report, e-waste in 13 Latin American countries analysed rose by 49 per cent between 2010 and 2019, roughly the world average, but just three per cent was collected and safely managed, a fraction of the 17.4 per cent global average. In 2019, e-waste generated by 206 million citizens in the 13 countries reached 1,300,000 tonnes (1.3 megatonnes, of which almost 30 per cent was plastic) – equal in weight to a 670km line of fully loaded 40-ton trucks. The comparable figure in 2010 was 900,000 tonnes, generated by about 185 million citizens. The 13 countries included in the study were Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, El Salvador, Uruguay, and Venezuela. While informal recyclers “cherry-pick” some valuable elements…

  • Possible sites for UK’s first fusion power plant revealed

    The Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) programme is seeking to ease the development of commercial fusion power plants that are capable of producing a limitless supply of low-carbon, clean energy. It will also showcase how a future fusion power station will be operated and maintained. The government committed £220m for the conceptual design of the power station in 2020 as part of efforts to move the UK towards a zero-carbon energy network. STEP has been conceived as a successor of sorts to the ITER tokamak proof-of-concept fusion plant that has been under construction in France since 2013. ITER’s main reactor is planned to be completed in late 2025 and is designed to create and sustain a plasma of 500MW (thermal power) for 20 minutes, with just 50MW of thermal power injected…

  • Get more done: why now is the time to automate

    Economic indicators are mixed but worrying. Towards the end of last year, the government began to talk up the post-pandemic, post-Brexit economy as the dawn of a high-wage, high-tech, high-skills economy. Can they really make such a cause-and-effect link? What might be missing from the equation? The UK’s missing productivity is a long running economic mystery and a hugely complex problem. Chris Edwards kicks of our special issue on productivity and investment by examining the roots of the problem and the range of measures that will be needed to lift the UK out of its decades long productivity slump in ‘Zombie Nation’ . The UK lags behind most of its competitors in automation and robotics. Is the post-pandemic and post-Brexit environment of rising wages and vacancies the pressure industry…

  • British sugar installs private 4G network to automate its factories

    The custom network, which was built by Virgin Media O2, will be used by British Sugar to implement next-generation manufacturing techniques at all four of its sites, spanning three counties. The network will connect multiple IoT devices, allowing for a modernisation of the production process such as the ability use to AI systems; automated production lines; robotics, and drones. The firm believes the network will help it to increase productivity, boost efficiency and even improve health and safety on site. Following a multi-million-pound investment, British Sugar will create four ‘factory of the future’ sites, automating the manufacturing process for sugar and other co-products. Part of this will be relying on AI to monitor operations in real time and predict maintenance and potential…

  • Data from wearable technology used to detect depression

    According to a 2021 World Health Organisation fact sheet, depression affects 264 million people globally and is undiagnosed and untreated in half of all cases. In Singapore, where the Covid-19 pandemic has led to increased concerns over mental well-being, a study by the Singapore’s Institute of Mental Health pointed to a likely increase in mental health issues, including depression, related to the pandemic. Activity trackers, meanwhile, are already estimated to be worn by nearly a billion people, up from 722 million in 2019. The NTU Singapore team conducted trials using data from groups of depressed and healthy participants. Powered by machine learning, the program - named the 'Ycogni model' - screens for the risk of depression by analysing an individual’s physical activity, sleep patterns…

  • Floating offshore wind schemes to receive £31m in Government funding

    According to the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy (BEIS),  11 successful applicants are receiving a share of the money, which is matched by more than £30m from industry. Such funding will boost the sector by over £60m in funding. The funding, of up to £10m per project, aims to support research and development of technology for floating offshore wind , and bring down the costs of building and deploying the renewable power source more quickly, BEIS added. The Government said that with global gas prices at record highs, it wanted to strengthen energy security in the UK – already home to the world’s largest deployment of offshore wind – by deploying more home-grown renewables to reduce dependency on imported fossil fuels. “We are already a world leader in offshore…

  • ‘Fireflies’ with infrared vision could transform turbine inspections

    Two Cambridge-based companies, Innvotek and Mapair, have successfully trialled a drone system that uses infrared technologies and artificial intelligence to inspect composite structures, including wind turbines and aircraft wings, for defects. Firefly Inspect can hover above wind turbine blades and aircraft using a 1,000W heat lamp to test for defects – the first time that such a powerful heat source has been fitted to a drone. Firefly Inspect was originally a concept for inspecting aeroplane wings when they are stationary within hangars. Thanks to a collaboration with the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult, the technology has now been adapted to include inspection of on- and offshore wind turbines. During recent trials at ORE Catapult’s National Renewable Energy Centre in Blyth…

  • Airlines will be forced to operate more flights to keep airport slots

    Following the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the rules around parking planes in airports were loosened so airlines were only obliged to use them 50 per cent of the time. This decision was made in order to provide some relief to the sector, which was one of the worst hit by the pandemic as people drastically reduced the amount they travelled between countries. But airlines will now be forced to use their airport slots 70 per cent of the time from 27 March in order to keep them as demand for flights slowly returns to pre-pandemic levels. But a complete recovery could still be years away. A poll in April found that 40 per cent of European business travellers said they would travel by plane less in the future, and analysts have predicted that a full recovery may not occur until 2024 at the…

  • UK households to lose billions this year over 2013 decision to cut insulation funding

    Cameron was reported to have ordered aides to “get rid of all the green crap” with regards to efforts to lower consumer energy bills. The move sparked a furious reaction from campaigners at the time for failing to live up to 2010 manifesto promises on the environment. The ECIU has now calculated the long-term impact of this decision and believes it undermines the current government’s own ambitions to upgrade UK homes’ average energy efficiency from ‘band D’ to ‘band C’. If insulation was being installed at the rate seen in 2012, the analysis found that up to nine million extra homes would have been upgraded – saving each household an estimated £170 each. In July 2020, the government announced a £3bn package for British homeowners to make their houses more energy efficient and improve…

  • HS2 North West extension bill laid before parliament

    The plans will see new high-speed stations being built at Manchester Piccadilly and Manchester Airport, making way for new lines to Leeds and Liverpool. Once approved, the High Speed Rail (Crewe to Manchester) Bill will allow HS2 to continue its journey from Crewe to Manchester, which the government says will help boost local economies throughout north-west England. The Department for Transport (DfT) says travel times from London to Manchester will be cut by around 55 minutes and Birmingham to Manchester by up to 45 minutes. The DfT also estimates that the construction phase of the new leg could bring 17,500 direct jobs to Northern communities. Thousands of jobs in the supply chain are expected to follow, including those in rolling stock depots to be established north of Crewe, as well…

  • View from Brussels: Road safety lessons at EU HQ

    The ‘Zone 30’ plan was met with plenty of vocal opposition when it was first rolled out on 1 January 2021. Its critics said it would make the capital’s road congestion even worse and hurt the economy of the entire country. For the ministers of the Brussels regional government, it was a Herculean feat to get the new speed limit signed into law, especially given the Byzantine nature of Belgium’s commune and municipality system, which requires a lot of people all agreeing on the same thing. Indeed, Brussels transport minister Elke Van den Brandt quips that one commune towards the east of the city was opposed to the speed limit plan until they realised that every other area had signed up to it. Its residents quickly changed their tune. Brussels-Mobility , the city’s public works department…

  • Flying car officially certified for airworthiness

    The Slovak Transport Authority issued the certificate to AirCar following the successful completion of 70 hours of rigorous flight testing compatible with European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) standards, with over 200 takeoffs and landings. The challenging flight tests included the full range of flight and performance maneuvers and demonstrated impressive static and dynamic stability in the aircraft mode. The takeoff and landing procedures were also achieved without the pilot’s need to touch the flight controls. It took a team of eight skilled specialists and over 100,000 manhours to convert design drawings into mathematical models with CFD analysis calculations; wind tunnel testing; a 1:1 design prototype powered by an electric 15KW engine, to a 1,000kg two-seat dual-mode prototype powered…

  • View from India: Digital unlocks new avenues for marketing and advertising

    India is home to new-age business models such as payment app Paytm, ed-tech company Byju’s, and  the food delivery restaurant aggregator Zomato. The pandemic’s thrust on digital payments, contactless procedures and lockdown restrictions has made the masses reach out to these business models. Their services, which were initially restricted to a community of users, have become a must-have for everyone. This category is expected to grow. Speaking at the ASSOCHAM Virtual Summit on Branding and Marketing, Saugata Gupta, managing director & CEO of Marico Ltd, said: “Low cost of failure and quick go-to-market products could urge companies and entrepreneurs to experiment with newer models. FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) companies are working on test-trial models that yield results within 30-40…

  • British Army’s new Apache helicopters with advanced targeting begin flight tests

    Wattisham Flying Station in Suffolk has taken delivery of 14 of the new aircraft from Boeing, with 36 more due to arrive by the summer of 2024. The British Army is currently testing them, with a booster to aerial capability anticipated early next year when they enter operational capability. They are able to detect 256 potential targets at once, prioritising the most urgent threats within seconds, up to a range of 16km away. The AH-64E is the most advanced variant of the Apache. It is designed and equipped with an open systems architecture, including the latest communications, navigation, sensor and weapon systems. It also features advanced digital connectivity, a Joint Tactical Information Distribution System, capability to control unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and new composite main…

  • The eccentric engineer: the truly heroic story of Wrong-Way Corrigan

    Douglas Corrigan was the right man in the right place at the wrong time when Charles Lindbergh became the first person to fly across the Atlantic solo. The son of an engineer with a troubled upbringing, he had fallen in love with flying in 1925 when he took a pleasure flight in a Curtiss JN-4 biplane. Within a week he was taking flying lessons and six months later he was flying solo. To be a flyer in the 1920s was to be an engineer, as the aeroplanes of the day required extensive maintenance just to keep flying. Corrigan soon got a job as an aeronautical engineer with the Ryan Aeronautical company, where he was charged with fitting the fuel tanks and instrument panels on a new, bespoke plane for Charles Lindbergh – the Spirit of St Louis. Lindbergh had everything going for him, including…

  • Johnson’s Scotland-Ireland bridge idea cost taxpayers £900,000

    The Department for Transport (DfT) said the research into the feasibility of a fixed link cost £896,681. The idea of building a Scotland-Ireland connecting bridge or tunnel was finally scrapped in November 2021 . Network Rail chairman Sir Peter Hendy led the investigation, which found that a bridge would cost £335bn, while a tunnel would require a budget of around £209bn. His report concluded that the project “would be impossible to justify” as “the benefits could not possibly outweigh the costs”. In addition to the huge expense, the inquiry also noted that the necessary work would be incredibly challenging. The ill-conceived idea was initially announced in February 2020 , as Boris Johnson sought to give his signature thumbs-up to an infrastructure project that would cement the legacy…

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