This is a Hybrid BMW Mini One, but don't look for it on the market yet. BMW disavows any connection with the vehicle which is built—or more accurately rebuilt by PML Flightlink. PML has dubbed it the Mini QED. With PML in-wheel drive technology each wheel has it's own 160 horse electric motor for a total of 640 HP.

They start by striping the Mini One discarding the engine, disc brakes, wheels, and gearbox. These are replaced by four of the in-wheel electric drives, a lithium polymer battery, a large ultra capacitor, a very small a small conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) w/generator. They don't say what size the engine is other than it's really small (less than 1/10th of the original Mini One engine). That's probably because it get used very little for driving, and mostly to recharge the batteries which have an "all-electric range of 200-250 miles."

Treehugger has more details and specifications.



Also a lot more at WorldCarFans.com.

Today we find robots for just about anything from toys to assisting with care for the elderly and sick. Now however journalists may have a legitimate reason for concern.


Hmmm, wonder if I could get a program to blog for me? ...Just a couple days a week.

Some scientists believe with the possibility of natural disasters, some that could even destroy much of the earth we need a backup plan.

Ray Kurzweil has an article in the September Polular Science about "The Future of Robots." The article was interesting as anything about Robotics usually is as far as I am concerned. What really drew my eye though was a photo essay by Eric Mika (click on "View Photos") which has a Robot with vocal cords, lungs, and a tongue.

Why did this stand out especially? Well at one time I had wanted to build exactly that but only the speech aspect of it. Well at least I did until it became apparent that—although I wasn't daunted by the complity of the task—it was going to cost way more than I could ever think to afford this speech system, even without the rest of the robot. My contention was that a robot speaking through a speaker was a silly idea and that the voice should be naturally produced in a similar manner as ours.

Anyway Atsuo Takanishi and one of his Ph.D. students at a University in Tokyo has brought my idea to fruitation. They built the WT-6 working model pictured below which has uncannily clear human like speech. Note the rubber face necessary for resonance and clarity, and piston lungs. My lungs (as designed but never built) instead were to be run by a bellows similar to that used to flame a fireplace.




The most interesting aspect of my short lived endeavor was that I learned some interesting mechanics about human speech. Like the relationship between many groups of consonants (which is the reason for the groupings below). The reason they are gouped together is because mechanically they are formed exaclty the same (i. e. B,P and M). More on that in a bit, but it obviously made it possible to reduce my mechanical alphabet to less than a dozen sounds. Sounds that can be modified with simple timing as you will see, plus the C and Q used in English speech are not used in mechanical speech. For example cow would be kow, and queen would be kueen, and as strange as that may look it would be a much more appropriate way to spell them.

This is the short mechanical alphabet sans-vowels (and I hope I have it right because I dicarded my old work on this project years ago and this was qickly rehashed). Those in () are produced identically except for timing conciderations. Note that the sounds not grouped are those that either use little or no tongue or lips, or do not block air flow when spoken as the others do.

B (P-M)
D (T-N)
F (V)
G (K)
H (X)
J (SH-CH)
L
R
S (Z)
W
Y

All vowels and variations of them use identical mechanics regarless of the consonants they are used with and don't need to be concidered for the purpose of this explanation. Here is how it works, concider the following sentence:

"Ted was dead after a beating from Ned."

Three words in that sentence all start with a sound that is produced (mechanically) in an identical manner except for one slight modification. Those words are Ted Dead and Ned, or more precisely the consonants t, d and n. Repeat the three words in a monotone and see if you can catch what the difference is.

For illustration lets forget most of the mechanics and reduce it to just three parts.
1. Expelling air. (harsh or soft out of the lungs)
2. Modulation. (causing the vocal cords to vibrate)
3. Tongue release point. (and timing between 1&2 plus directing through nose or mouth)

The only difference in the t, d and n in our example is the "timing" relationship between these, and whether the released sound is through the nose, mouth, or switched between them after the sound starts.

In Ted the air starts expelling "before" the vocal cords start to vibrate causing the 't' sound. In Dead the vocal cords start to vibrate simultaneously as the air begins to expell. Ned is trickier but still the vocal cords and air are simultaneous but you hold your tongue in place for a short moment causing the air to be muffled as it is directed partially through the nose. The latter becomes more obvious by holding your nose while saying our three words. The word Ned is muffled and you can feel the pressure.

Not convinced? Try sounding out the rest that are grouped.

be be pe pe me me
de de te te ne ne
fe fe ve ve
go go ko ko
ja ja sha sha cha cha
se se ze ze

Well I suppose that by now I've bored some of you to near frustration, but I found all of this interesting at the time I worked on it, and wanted to share some of it.