• Ocado Technology and Aeon partner to build third robotic warehouse in Japan

    Japanese retailer Aeon opened its first robotic warehouse powered with Ocado’s technology a year ago. With another warehouse already in the works, the pair have now announced that a third will be built. Long before the pandemic made online home-delivery groceries mainstream, Ocado Technology was developing innovative solutions to streamline the whole process. For two decades this technology company, which holds a 50% share of Ocado Retail in the UK in a joint venture with Marks & Spencer, has been developing end-to-end online grocery fulfilment solutions. Groceries are picked, packed and then delivered directly to the customer’s doorstep from centralised warehouses. These warehouses feature cutting-edge technology – including robotics and AI – along with automation. Fleets of bots …

  • A word from....Please may I have

    A new team is heading up the UK government. Such are our publishing timescales I cannot know if this is a rejig of old personnel or a full change of administration. And we are not alone – 2024 is a year of elections around the world and it will feel equally momentous for every one of those countries. But do we, as global citizens, all have the same priorities? Some countries will be subject to local issues such as conflict or disasters, but most others will be focused on issues like economics, health, education and policing. But where does engineering fit in? Short-termism has always been a recurring bugbear in a sector where projects (and their consequences) can last for decades. Big infrastructure projects in transport and energy need a long-term vision and commitment, and shouldn’t fall…

  • A new day, a new government - the engineering and technology sector reacts to Labour pledges

    With Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party having won the 2024 general election in a landslide victory, all eyes will now turn to its manifesto pledges. The IET has welcomed the new Labour government and looks forward to working with it. As Ed Almond, IET’s chief executive, said: “This is a chance for the new administration to work with experts and provide strong leadership to address some of the key challenges and seize the huge opportunities that the UK will face over the course of the next parliament. “In particular, the opportunities around decarbonising to reach net-zero and ensuring a competitive and resilient innovation sector through an industrial strategy backed by a secure skills pipeline,” he added. Transport In its manifesto, one of the standout commitments in terms of transport…

  • Mandatory speed limiters come into force in the EU and Northern Ireland

    All new vehicles sold in Europe – including Northern Ireland but not Great Britain – will be required from now on to have intelligent speed assistance technology installed. From 7 July 2024, every vehicle sold in the EU and Northern Ireland will need to be fitted with a range of technical safety features as standard. The most notable of these is the Intelligent Speed Assist (ISA) or speed limiter. Those vehicles already registered or in circulation are exempt, but any existing unregistered cars on forecourts will have to be retrofitted with a speed limiter before they can be sold. This ISA mandate comes after the European Commission’s legislation that made it a legal requirement for all new vehicles sold in Europe to be fitted with a speed limiter from 6 July 2022. The difference is…

  • Painting roofs white dramatically cuts building overheating

    Painting roofs white or covering them with a reflective coating is a more effective way to cool buildings in cities like London compared to vegetation-covered ‘green roofs’, University College London (UCL) researchers have said. As the climate changes, residents within cities are particularly vulnerable to warming temperatures. Cities generally trap heat, inducing the urban heat island effect that can lead to greater discomfort and mortality for residents during hot spells. The study used a three-dimensional urban climate model of Greater London to test the thermal effects of different passive and active urban heat management systems, including painted ‘cool roofs’, rooftop solar panels, green roofs, ground-level tree vegetation and air conditioning during the two hottest days of the summer…

  • Steel sector urges incoming government to cut wholesale electricity prices

    The UK’s steel industry has urged the incoming Labour government to cut wholesale electricity prices to help it compete with Europe. An analysis from UK Steel showed that domestic electricity wholesale prices are more than double the cost of French and Spanish electricity over the past three months. Price data suggests that UK producers faced average wholesale prices of almost £66 per megawatt hour (MWh) in the past three months compared to France’s £27/MWh and Spain’s £28/MWh. The industry is heavily reliant on electricity for its manufacturing processes, and this demand is expected to grow as new electric arc furnace (EAF) technology comes online. EAFs are considered to be a necessary technology for steel manufacturing to move towards net zero carbon emissions, but the switch is expected…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Japan’s government finally ditches the floppy disk in all its systems

    Two years after the Japanese government declared “a war on floppy disks”, their use has finally been eliminated. In 2011, Sony ceased production of the floppy disk. As a form of media on which to save documents, the 3.5-inch floppy disk was a mainstay of PC software almost three decades ago. According to PCMag, by 1996 five billion ‘floppies’ were in use, with each one accommodating up to 1.44MB of data. While the floppy disk has since been overtaken by advancements in other forms of storage media including CDs, DVDs, USBs and the cloud, floppy disks continue to be used in Japan. The Japanese government has for many years required residents to use floppy disks or CD-ROMs to submit more than 1,900 official documents to the government. However, while Japan had for a number of years said…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Gadget reviews: Kobo Libra Colour e-reader, Pebblebee tracker, Nokia 3210

    Kobo Libra Colour Kobo’s latest colour e-reader fills a niche that has surprisingly still not been met by Amazon’s Kindle range. But maybe there is a reason for that. Although the technology has been on the market for more than 10 years, some basic hurdles are still to be overcome – and Kobo’s offering is no exception. Muted colours and poor contrast ratios have long plagued devices relying on displays such as this. When compared to the high-quality LCD and OLED screens everyone has become accustomed to, colours consistently fail to ‘pop’ on e-ink displays. But while the technology still needs work, Kobo should be given some credit for what they’ve done with the Libra Colour. I tried Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One – a well-regarded classic for graphic novel fans – and the experience…

  • US Air Force unveils drone that can fly for 80 hours continuously

    The United States Air Force (USAF) has revealed a new reconnaissance drone that is capable of operating for up to 80 hours in the air without refuelling. The Unmanned Long-endurance Tactical Reconnaissance Aircraft (ULTRA) was conceived by the Air Force Research Laboratory Center for Rapid Innovation and developed in conjunction with DZYNE Technologies Incorporated. In tests, ULTRA was capable of carrying over 180kg of payload while flying for 80 hours continuously. The USAF said this makes the drone an “economical” option compared to other surveillance operations that can require multiple aircraft to ensure continued coverage. The drone houses a variety of electro-optical/infrared, radiofrequency and other low-cost sensors to aid in intelligence collection, and can be controlled anywhere…

  • Decarbonising aviation will come at a cost to passengers, warns British Airways owner

    Luis Gallego – chief executive officer of International Airlines Group (IAG), which owns British Airways – has said airlines in Europe will be forced to raise prices to fund the cost of cutting carbon emissions. This comes as Lufthansa recently announced a ticket surcharge to cover the “steadily rising additional costs” of new environmental fuel requirements. Aviation accounts for approximately 3% of total CO2 emissions worldwide. It is considered a hard-to-abate sector because of a lack of technologically mature alternatives to traditional jet-fuelled engines such as electric or hydrogen-fuelled aircraft. As a means to cut emissions, the focus is on the adoption of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF). Earlier this year, the UK government confirmed that the SAF mandate will come into force…

  • Elizabeth line rolls out 4G and 5G in tunnels at central London stations

    The Elizabeth line has received 4G and 5G mobile connections for the first time between Liverpool Street and Paddington stations. After all stations on the line got mobile coverage earlier this year, Transport for London (TfL) and Boldyn Networks, TfL’s partner in delivering the connectivity, have now introduced coverage within the tunnels from the Royal Oak portal to the west of Paddington to Liverpool Street station – approximately five miles. All four mobile network operators – Three UK, EE, Vodafone and Virgin Media O2 – are taking part in the roll-out. TfL said further tunnelled sections to Whitechapel, Canary Wharf and Woolwich will be connected across the summer, building on all Elizabeth line stations getting mobile coverage earlier this year. The current roll-out should see…

  • Comment: Why AI cloud computing beats on-premise infrastructure

    Daniel Beers, senior vice president of global data centre operations at Ardent Data Centers – a global developer of data centre environments for high performance computing and part of the Northern Data Group – addresses why in our AI world businesses should choose to access external computing power via the cloud rather than invest in on-site infrastructure. The age-old argument of buying versus leasing has plagued organisations for centuries. From the decision to rent an office rather than purchasing the building, to hiring seasonal workers instead of permanent staff, even to signing up for a monthly rather than annual Adobe Photoshop subscription – everyday business is flush with dilemmas regarding the permanence of places, products and services. Often there’s no clear-cut answer: leaders…

  • Indonesia launches first EV battery plant to take advantage of rich nickel resources

    South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Group and LG Energy Solution (LGES) – one of the world’s largest battery makers, which is headquartered in Seoul – have launched Indonesia’s first battery cell production plant with the capacity to produce up to 10 gigawatt hours (GWh) of battery cells every year. The joint venture is part of a commitment between the two companies made in 2020 that will see investment of up to $9.8bn in Indonesia to develop an electric vehicle (EV) supply chain. This new battery cell factory in West Java province will have enough annual capacity to produce batteries that can power more than 150,000 battery-based EVs. Indonesia, which is the world’s top producer of nickel, banned exports of raw nickel in 2020 to encourage investment into domestic processing of the metal. At…

  • ESA to launch Earth observation satellite with AI capabilities onboard

    The European Space Agency (ESA) is launching a new mission in the coming weeks called Φsat-1, which it says will “push the boundaries” of AI for Earth observation purposes. Earth observation technologies are crucial for a wide range of applications including weather prediction, climate change monitoring and tracking natural disasters. Thanks to new satellites and advanced sensors, the scale and quality of available Earth observation data has risen exponentially in the past decade. Now, the integration of AI could lead to even greater capabilities by allowing for more data to be processed quickly and accurately onboard the satellite itself. ESA launched Ф-sat-1 in 2020 as an experiment to demonstrate how AI can be used in the field. Φsat-2 is a dedicated AI mission that will fully explore…

  • AI’s energy demand causes Google’s carbon emissions to soar by nearly 50% in five years

    Google’s increased reliance on energy-hungry data centres to power its new artificial intelligence (AI) products has resulted in a 48% rise in the company’s carbon emissions in five years. This week, the tech giant’s annual environmental report revealed that while the company is on “an ambitious journey to help build a more sustainable future”, it has fallen short of its climate goals, with its emissions in 2023 having risen 13% on the previous year, reaching 14.3 million metric tons. It pins the reason for this rise on “increases in data centre energy consumption and supply chain emissions”. Data centres play a crucial role in training and operating the models that underpin AI models such as Google’s Gemini, which was released by Google in 2023 as a competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4.…

  • Vodafone and O2 strike mobile infrastructure sharing deal

    Mobile networks Vodafone and O2 have signed a decade-long deal to share their network infrastructure in a bid to improve performance and coverage. The firms previously established a similar arrangement in 2012 in a bid to improve the roll-out of 4G, and eventually 5G once the standard was launched. The deal would also extend to Three if its merger with Vodafone is approved by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). The resulting company has yet to have an official name, but is currently referred to as MergeCo. An investigation into the deal was launched in March over concerns that it could lead to higher prices for consumers. While many elements of the new agreement expand on the existing arrangement, if the merger goes ahead, the operators have agreed that Virgin Media O2 will acquire…

  • General Election 2024: the engineering and technology offerings from the big three parties

    With just days to go until the general election, what do the main three political parties offer the electorate in terms of engineering and technology? Conservative Party Infrastructure and transport The UK’s infrastructure has been plagued by underfunding in recent years, leaving roads and transport networks crumbling while waterways fill with pollutants. The Conservatives have pledged a £36bn investment in roads, rail and buses. This includes £8.3bn to fill potholes and resurface roads, which is funded by cancelling the second phase of HS2. The party pledges that its Northern Powerhouse Rail plan will bring more frequent trains, more capacity and faster journeys. Savings from HS2 will also be spent on funding rail electrification to Hull and building a new station in Bradford. …

  • Posts from bot-like accounts viewed more than 150 million times ahead of UK election

    Bot-like accounts spreading hate and disinformation on social media platform X have had their posts seen more than an estimated 150 million times in the last few weeks ahead of the UK election. In an attempt to see just how prolific bots are at spreading political messages during the UK electoral period, international NGO Global Witness decided to investigate 10 bot-like accounts on X. Bots are accounts run by computers that have been programmed to look like humans. Unlike humans, they don’t work or sleep and so can post all hours of the day and night. Since the UK general election was announced on 22 May 2024, Global Witness found that these 10 accounts have posted more than 60,000 posts, sharing anywhere from 200 to over 500 posts a day. As a result, the watchdog estimates these posts…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • New internet speed world record set using standard commercially-available optical fibre

    An international research team led by the Photonic Network Laboratory of Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) has set a new world record for data transmission speed of 402 terabits per second using commercially-available optical fibre. This new record eclipses the team’s previous record, announced in March 2024, of 301 terabits per second using a single standard optical fibre. To put this new record-breaking speed into context, a data-rate of 402 terabits per second would enable a Netflix user to download all currently available films on its streaming service in less than a second. Put another way, compared to Netflix’s current internet connection speed recommendations – 3 Mbit/s or higher – for watching an HD movie, this speed is over 100 million…

  • Vatican City to take a stand on climate change by going 100% solar

    Pope Francis has unveiled plans for a solar plant that will let the Vatican City generate all its electricity from renewable sources. With an area of 121 acres or 0.44km2 and a population of around 825, the Vatican City in Rome is the smallest independent state in the world by both area and population. It has now earned itself another accolade: one of only a few countries in the world to be powered by 100% renewable energy. According to data from the International Energy Agency, Albania, Bhutan, Nepal, Paraguay, Iceland, Ethiopia and Congo generate more than 99.7% of their electricity from renewables.In his recent apostolic letter, Fratello Sole (Brother Sun), Pope Francis has initiated the construction of a “agrivoltaic system” within the extraterritorial area of Santa Maria di Galeria…

  • China opens 50km-long Shenzhen-Zhongshan Link bridge-tunnel system

    China has finally opened the 50km-long Shenzhen-Zhongshan Link to traffic. This bridge-tunnel system spans two sides of the Pearl River Delta near Hong Kong. Construction on the project began in 2017 to connect the city of Zhongshan to Shenzhen. It consists of a 6.7km tunnel starting on the Shenzhen side leading to 19 bridges, totalling 43km in length. The tunnel is the world’s longest and widest underwater steel-shell concrete tunnel and is equipped with numerous devices to ensure its safe and stable operation. This includes 14 robots, dual-wavelength flame detectors and Beidou satellite navigation signal simulators. Traffic can be rerouted in the event of a car accident with built-in loudspeakers, while an extensive array of cameras will convey any incidents to a remote-control centre…

    E+T Magazine
    E+T Magazine

  • Boeing buys aircraft manufacturer Spirit AeroSystems in $4.7bn deal

    Embattled defence firm Boeing has announced it will acquire aircraft manufacturer Spirit AeroSystems in a deal worth $4.7bn (£3.7bn). Spirit, based in Kansas, has long been contracted to build important pieces of Boeing aircraft, including the fuselage of the 737 and 787, as well as the flight deck section of the fuselage of nearly all Boeing airliners. Spirit also produces parts for Boeing’s main rival Airbus, including fuselage sections and front wing spars for the A350 and the wings for the A220. Spirit was previously owned by Boeing until 2005, when the division was sold off to the Onex Corporation. Boeing said its decision to bring the firm back under its wing after nearly 20 years was part of efforts to align its safety and quality management. The firm has faced a difficult few…

  • Vessels in Arctic waters now banned from using and carrying ‘dirty’ HFO

    The Arctic Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO) ban has now officially come into effect, but campaigners argue that loopholes in the regulation mean this dirty fuel will pollute the environment for many years to come. The International Maritime Organization (IMO), the London-headquartered specialised agency of the UN responsible for regulating maritime transport, has enforced the Arctic HFO ban from 1 July 2024. This regulation bans the use and carriage of HFO as fuel by Arctic shipping. HFO is widely used in shipping around the world, especially tankers. According to the IMO, it accounts for 80% of marine fuel used worldwide. HFO is a thick, tar-like fossil fuel that is relatively cheap to produce. It has devastating consequences if spilled, especially in icy waters as it breaks down very slowly and…

  • A grave problem in dealing with the dead

    With finite space and an ever-growing population, what are we to do with the dead? New end-of-life technologies such as water cremation and human composting could be the answer. Two wheelbarrows of compost or some sterile, soapy-smelling liquid – it’s somewhat unsettling to focus on the results of the new ways to dispose of bodies, of which there are around 9,000 new ones each week in England and Wales. These new techniques are akin, objectors might say, to ‘flushing Granny down the drain’ – or spreading her over the earth. These are the end products of two ‘off the shelf’ technologies that have not yet been widely adopted: human composting and alkaline hydrolysis, the latter also known as resomation, aquamation, green cremation and water cremation. These may be greener ways to deal with…

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