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Elon Musk has showcased his first detailed vision for sending humans to Mars, unveiling his design for a “Battlestar Galactica-style” fleet of spacecraft to carry interplanetary pioneers for less than $200,000 a ticket. - The Times Read more...
One of the IET's Education Partners, Fun Kids Radio who do the Techno Mum children’s radio series for us are developing a new series with a grant from the European Space Agency about the Aurora robotic exploration of Mars. They are looking for young enthusiastic young space professionals to help them develop this series. A summary of the project is attached to this blog and if you are interested in helping please contact Gregory Watson at Fun Kids Radio.
With less than three weeks to go before the Intelligent Imaging event, we are thrilled to announce our final speaker of the day! Welcome to: Prejaas Tewarie , Postdoctoral fellow at Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre, School of Physics, University of Nottingham About Prejaas: Prejaas obtained his medical degree at VU University Medical Centre in Amsterdam, followed by a PhD in clinical neuroscience. His work during his PhD research was focused on functional brain networks in multiple sclerosis, but also included methodological work on brain network organization in healthy subjects. The empirical brain networks were mainly studied using the neuroimaging techniques: magnetoencephalography (MEG) and (functional) MRI. During the same period, he received his BSc and MSc in applied physics from the…
Congratulations to our Present Around The World Perth 2016 winner, Robin Olsen from Edith Cowan University. Rovik's topic is on "Omega, The Autonomous Robot" and we are inspired and fascinated by his research. We wish Rovik all the best in the Australia final happening in Brisbane 2017! Congratulations to the first runner up, Kody Ponds from Murdoch University. She delivered her topic on "Global Advantage Towards Energy Aggregation" and handled the public questions and answers fearlessly and confidently.
IET Central London Evening Lecture, Savoy Place, 21-Sep-2016 Joint event with The Royal Aeronautical Society Presented by: Andy Barton, Hybrid Air Vehicles Can we now forget the aeroplane, and embrace the re-birth of the airship? From what we heard from Andy, the answer is "yes", at least for some applications. Whilst not cheaper than sea, rail or road freight (on a cost/load basis), it could well be the answer where such infrastructure does not exist or is impractical. The modern solution is quite different from what we knew from the 20th century, widely used in WW2. Then, they were rigid and filled with hydrogen, suffering from well-documented drawbacks and disasters. The current generation has learnt from the past. Barnes Wallis, who designed the successful R100, gave the founder of…
'but raise fears emergency services will be swamped when they become compulsory' - The Daily Mail Read more...
The first delivery of American shale gas to Britain is set to arrive this morning, as 27,500 cubic metres of ethane arrives at the Grangemouth petrochemical plant near Edinburgh. Read more...
Science, technology, engineering and maths graduates are in the frame for lucrative jobs Read more...
Did you know the IET has a full suite of Radar, Sonar and Navigation resources? Access world-class radar, sonar and navigation research, online and in print. Providing fresh perspectives and developments in a range of topics within the fields of radar, sonar and navigation IET Books – find out about current, new and forthcoming book IET Journals - the IET Journals portfolio offers a wealth of research and information in a wide range engineering and technology fields. Electronic Letters - Electronics Letters is an internationally renowned peer-reviewed rapid-communication journal, which publishes short original research papers every two weeks. The broad and interdisciplinary scope covers the latest developments in all electronic and electrical engineering related fields. Digital Library…
I'm very happy to turn over this blog posting to Glenn Miles , lecturer at Coventry University who tells us more about the new Manufacturing Engineering Degree. It is late September as I write and next month sees the return of students to Coventry University. This year, as new course director of the relatively new Manufacturing Engineering degree, I have inherited a unique set of final year students. They are unique in several respects. Most appropriately for this blog they will be the first graduates of the new course and will be the living evidence of the hard work that has gone into the creation and delivery of the course as it prepares for accreditation with the IET. They will also be the first graduates that have been taught on the UK’s first “Faculty on the Shop Floor”, a Unipart-Coventry…
October sees the IET TPN committees enter the new session for 2016/2017. We will be looking ahead to the next 12 months to implement our plan for workshops, events and online content to support and expose the inner workings of the space sector. So what can we learn from 2016 so far and what can we look forward to as we go into 2017? The TPN kicked off the 2015/2016 session following the well-received Space systems, Services and Applications for Cities of the Future event, held at the Satellite Applications Catapult in Harwell. This one-day workshop highlighted the bright future both government and industry saw in the space sector supporting the increasing need for continuous connectivity and real-time, wide-spread data acquisition and dissemination for audiences ranging from institutional decision…
The past few years has seen the Aerospace Community, TPN and TAP go through a series of positive changes in terms of refocus, refresh and expansion. We have seen the formation of an Aerospace Young Professionals Group, the inaugural Aerospace Annual Symposium, the delivery and support to a number of successful aerospace technical events around the UK, Europe and Asia, as well as the provision of a significant amount of technical advice in response to requests internally from the IET as well as from a number of UK and global external bodies and media. The 2018 session promises to be another exciting year for the Aerospace TPN as we look to build on the successes of previous sessions, through continuing engagement with industry, academia and government and growing the network and the number…
The Autumn 2016 Newsletter has now been added to the Communities page.
The video below is the Treasurer's Report at the South Island AGM, for the 2015/16 year. Paul Isaacs, the Honorary Treasurer is presenting.
It’s difficult to imagine seeing someone you know amongst 55,000 people but at IBC it’s the order of the day (and it started at the airport before you'd boarded the plane...) Arriving late on Thursday and getting ready for the start of the IBC exhibition on Friday surrounded by unpacked carpets and empty walk-ways there was an electric buzz in the air; will the stands be ready in time? No doubt for some Friday morning signalled the end of a hard night’s graft! But for me there was a friendly – and familiar face – already in the Partners’ Pavilion: SMPTE President Barbara Lange, who spoke passionately about SMPTE’s Centenary anniversary at this year’s JLB lecture . With 15 halls packing in 1,700 exhibitors you know you’ll be leaving IBC with a few blisters but your mind bubbling with new innovation…
We (IET volunteers and I) managed to pull off another successful CoderDojo on Saturday! This event took place at our Stevenage office, where 37 children and some parents attended. We continued to work on Scratch for game development and HTML for website building, in addition to introducing the BBC Micro:Bit; an idea that was conceived by the BBC and made possible by 29 partners, including the IET and CoderDojo. Despite the sheer terror that was instilled in me, due to lack of Wi-Fi for the first 30 minutes and the frantic running around that ensued; we received excellent feedback from those that attended, with a commitnemt from those commuting from London to Stevenage, to attend the next session! Honestly though, I now know how characters feel in movies when the dolly-zoom / vertigo shot…
The South Island Local Network held its AGM on the 29th of September 2016. At the AGM, reports from the Chair and the Treasurer were received, past and future events were discussed, and a new committee was elected. Thank you to the members that attended. The new committee for Oct 2016 to Sept 2017 is: Chairperson: Joe Connolly Honorary Treasurer: Paul Isaacs University of Canterbury On Campus Co-Chair & SRRC Rep: Moana Smith University of Canterbury On Campus Co-Chair: Grace Lee Committee Member: Robert Cooke Committee Member: Karla Smith Please get in touch with any of us if you have any questions you'd like to ask, suggestions for future events, or would like to volunteer and help run things! You can either private message us here on Engineering Communities, or create a discussion post…
Do you remember someone from early in your career who supported and inspired you to become the professional you are today? Could you be that person for someone working toward Professional Registration? Following the success of the first Mentoring Awareness Week in 2015 where we recruited 25 new mentors, The IET Mentoring Service are happy to announce the 2016 Mentoring Awareness week. This week of activity recognises the work done by those volunteering through the IET Volunteer Mentoring Service and also seeks new mentors to support those working toward professional registration. If you are already professionally registered with the IET, and have just a few hours a month to share with another member and feel that you could pass on your experience and support a developing engineer outside…
I read recently in an article by the Guardian that BSI has released a set of guidelines for ethical robot design: BS8611 Robots and robotic devices. According to the article, it is intended for use by robot and robotics device designers and managers and is designed to help people in these roles to identify and avoid areas of potential ethical harm. Alan Winfield, a professor of robotics at the University of the West of England, said they represented “the first step towards embedding ethical values into robotics and AI”. The Robotics & Mechatronics TPN have a regular slot in their annual programme on Robot Ethics and you can read more about our previous events in our blog section
Michael Faraday was born 225 years (and one day!) ago, on 22 September 1791. Faraday is an important name at the IET, and besides the statue outside Savoy Place, and the rooms, awards and events named after him, there are resources on Faraday's life and work in the Archives section of the IET website. The IET Archives also holds a world-class collection of Faraday's correspondence and personal notebooks, presented to the then Institution of Electrical Engineers by his family. This collection includes Faraday's diary and commonplace book, as well as correspondence with notable figures of the day including Charles Dickens. More information can be found on our online catalogue. To find out more about Faraday and the Faraday collections at the IET, visit our Michael Faraday page .
This year's prize of £250 has been awarded to Omar Khan. He is a student on the BSc Computing and Web Development programme at Buckinghamshire New University. The prize and a certificate were awarded Omar's Graduation Ceremony on Wednesday 6th September. Omar developed a prototype mobile App that was aimed at improving memory in adults over 50. To achieve this, he will made use of a range of techniques learned on his course including, human-computer interaction, artificial intelligence, mobile technologies and software development methodology. Omar received an exceptionally high mark for his Project and did exceptionally well across his whole course. Omar undertook the planning, development and analysis of the effectiveness of a memory aid app aiming to provide cerebral stimulation with…
The award, sponsored by the IET Robotics & Mechatronics TPN, was presented to Stefan Flixeder at the closing ceremony of the Mechatronics 2016 ( 7th IFAC Symposium on Mechatronic Systems & 15th Mechatronics Forum International Conference) held at Loughborough university 5th-8th September 2016. Recognition was given for the “best symposium paper” which provided outstanding contributions to the subject of Mechatronic Systems. A shortlist was derived from the reviews received on the papers, from which a Selection Committee chose the winner. Stefan received the Dipl.-Ing. degree in electrical engineering from TU Wien (TUW), Vienna, Austria, in 2012. Since 2012, he works as a project assistant at the Automation and Control Institute at TU Wien. His research interests include physics-based modeling…
Here's a neat little video I came across, showing how the police in America are using robots in dangerous situations.
ON JUNE 1st 2009, an Air France airliner travelling from Rio de Janeiro to Paris flew into a mid-Atlantic storm. Ice began forming in the sensors used by the aircraft to measure its airspeed, depriving the autopilot of that vital data. So, by design, the machine switched itself off and ceded control to the pilots. Without knowing their speed, and with no horizon visible in a storm in the dead of night, the crew struggled to cope. Against all their training, they kept the plane’s nose pointed upward, forcing it to lose speed and lift. Shortly afterwards the aeroplane plummeted into the ocean, killing all 228 people on board. French air-accident investigators concluded that a lack of pilot training played a big part in the tragedy. As cockpits become ever more computerised, pilots need to keep…
