Engineering

IAP Externships: NASA Experience Packs a Wallop

by Amy Marcott on February 21, 2012

in Alumni Life,Engineering,IAP,Student Life

Thanks to Tupper Hyde ’88, PhD ’96 for sending along these photos.

MIT IAP externs Brandon Le '15 (above) and Paul Lazarescu '13 checking out NASA's P-3B research aircraft based at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility as part of their project to figure out how to install a microwave Earth sensing instrument in Wallops aircraft. Their externship was during January 2012 with mentor Edward Kim '86, SM '89, EE '90 at the Goddard Space Flight Center.

MIT IAP externs Brandon Le ’15 (above) and Paul Lazarescu ’13 checking out NASA’s P-3B research aircraft based at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility as part of their project to figure out how to install a microwave Earth sensing instrument in Wallops aircraft. Their externship was during January 2012 with mentor Edward Kim ’86, SM ’89, EE ’90 at the Goddard Space Flight Center.

MIT IAP externs Brandon Le '15 (above) and Paul Lazarescu '13 checking out NASA's P-3B research aircraft based at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility as part of their project to figure out how to install a microwave Earth sensing instrument in Wallops aircraft. Their externship was during January 2012 with mentor Edward Kim '86, SM '89, EE '90 at the Goddard Space Flight Center.

Below: IAP Externs Timothy Joubert ’13, Lisa Johnson ’12, Paul Lazarescu ’13, Brandon Le ’15, Toks Fifo ’14, Nnaemeka Opara ’12, Ryan Lacey ’14, and Gholson Glass ’14 (not pictured) are joined by several decades of MIT Alumni at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Maryland on January 25, 2012, at a pizza lunch and Toast to IAP celebration.

IAP Externs Timothy Joubert '13, Lisa Johnson, Paul Lazarescu '13, Brandon Le '15, Toks Fifo '14, Nnaemeka Opara '12, Ryan Lacey '14, and Gholson Glass '14 (not pictured) are joined by several decades of MIT Alumni at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Maryland on January 25, 2012, at a pizza lunch and Toast to IAP celebration.

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Folding Car to Transform Urban Driving…and Make Parallel Parking Obsolete

by Jay London on February 8, 2012

in Alumni Life,Design,Economics,Energy,Engineering,In the News,Modern Geekhood,Research,Transportation

Looking for a parking space in a major city can make public transportation very appealing. The biggest urban driving hassles usually come not with driving itself, but with the stopping, turning, parallel parking, and the can-I-fit-in-this-space challenges that arise when you’ve reached your destination.

Enter the Hiriko (the Basque word for “urban”), a new compact vehicle designed by the MIT Media Lab whose first fleet of 20 vehicles will debut in Vitoria Gasteiz, Spain, in 2013.

From the New York Times:

The pod-like electric vehicle, whose battery pack would be leased, is a two-seater with 4-wheel drive and a range in excess of 100 kilometers, or about 60 miles. Because its wheelbase can collapse, a single parking space can accommodate three vehicles. Driver and passenger enter through a windshield that swings upward.

Instead of a single electric engine, each wheel has an independent dedicated engine, which allows for an amazing degree in control in suspension, steering, and turning. Smaller than a Smart Car, the Hiriko spins and rotates on its axis, a technique that MIT researchers call an “O-turn.” It also moves sideways, making parallel parking obsolete.

Professor Kent Larson leads the car’s Media Lab researcher team. A production model was unveiled before the European Union Commission in Brussels last week. In addition to Spain, future trials are planned in Boston, San Francisco, Berlin, Hong Kong, and Malmo, Sweden. Similar to ZipCar in the United States, the cars will be shared by users who will have access for a few hours at a time. Cars may be sold to individuals in the future, with cost estimates currently ranging around $16,000.

In addition to the Hiriko, a Media Lab team led by doctoral candidates Ryan Chin and William Lark has also created a three-wheel electric vehicle prototype that can function as a bicycle and meets all European bike-lane regulations.

For more information and video on Hiriko (formerly the MIT CityCar), visit the “Changing Places” section on the Media Lab site.

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Of Sunflowers and Solar Plants

by Jay London on February 1, 2012

in Design,Energy,Engineering,In the News,Learning,Research

When looking for ways to increase solar energy efficiency, MIT researchers simply stopped and smelled the…sunflowers.

Using the flower as inspiration, a team of researchers led by Professor Alexander Mitsos developed a solar panel layout that mimics the arrangement of sunflower florets, a pattern called Fermat’s spiral.

From MIT News:

“The MIT team…looked to nature for inspiration — specifically, to the sunflower. The florets of a sunflower are arranged in a spiraling pattern, known as a Fermat spiral, that appears in many natural objects and has long fascinated mathematicians: The ancient Greeks even applied the patterns to buildings and other architectural structures. Mathematicians have found that each sunflower floret is turned at a ‘golden angle’—about 137 degrees—with respect to its neighboring floret.”

The new layout takes up to 20 percent less space than Spain’s PS10 Solar Power Plant, Europe’s first concentrated solar power plant, which can covert enough electricity to power 6,000 homes.  Compared with the PS10’s configuration, where mirrors are arranged around in circles and the distance between mirrors akin to the seats in a movie theater, the new layout reduces shading and blocking, and increases total efficiency.

The research team, which includes Corey Noone SM ’11 and Manuel Torrihon of RWTH Aachen University in Germany, found that their new pattern could reduce shadowing and blocking throughout the day. Their findings were published in the journal Solar Energy, and the team has recently filed for patent protection.

From MIT News:

“…the spiral pattern reduced shading and blocking and increased total efficiency compared with PS10’s radially staggered configuration.

Mitsos says arranging a CSP plant in such a spiral pattern could reduce the amount of land and the number of heliostats required to generate an equivalent amount of energy, which could result in significant cost savings.”

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Faculty Forum Online: Making Desalination Efficient, Feb. 2

by Amy Marcott on January 26, 2012

in Engineering,Health,Learning

MIT Faculty Forum Online logo

Update: View a video of the presentation.

More than a billion people worldwide lack access to clean drinking water. Sea water is one possible solution. But current methods of desalination are expensive, energy intensive, and require infrastructure not usually available in areas most in need of it.

Tune in to hear how MIT Mechanical Engineering Professor John Lienhard P’15, who is also the director of the Center for Clean Water and Clean Energy at MIT and King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, applies basic science and engineering to address this problem.

Lienhard will offer his thoughts and take questions from the worldwide MIT alumni community via video chat on Thursday, Feb. 2, from Noon to 12:30 p.m. ET.

Register for this free event to receive the link for live viewing. After the event, come back here and continue the conversation in the comments.

John Lienhard. Photo: Len Rubenstein.

John Lienhard. Photo by Len Rubenstein.

About John Lienhard

John Lienhard P’15 is a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT as well as the director of the Center for Clean Water and Clean Energy at MIT and King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals.

He earned his BS and MS in chemical, nuclear, and thermal engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles and a PhD in fluid dynamics from the University of California, San Diego.

His research interests include desalination, water supply, energy, heat and mass transfer, fluid mechanics, convective transport, extremely high heat fluxes, and electronics thermal management.

Learn more in this Spectrum article—Drinkable Water for All.

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DIY IAP: Can You Top HelmetHub?

by Amy Marcott on January 12, 2012

in Classroom,Design,Engineering,Student Life

Prototype of HelmetHub

Click the image to view a demo from the student inventors.

Urban bike sharing arrived in Boston last summer to great success. Hubway offered 60 modular solar-powered stations and 600 bikes, which residents and tourists put to good use, logging more than 140,000 trips in four months. But one thing was missing from 70 percent of the riders: helmets. Which, as we all know, save lives.

So some MIT students in the 2.009 Product Engineering Processes class set about finding a solution and developed a prototype of what they call HelmetHub. The solar-powered vending machine, which occupies half the space of soda machine, would offer headgear that adjusts to fit most head sizes.

Urban bike sharing

According to Boston.com, the machines are currently being imagined as both sale and rental kiosks. Hubway users could return an $8 helmet for a partial refund if they desired. The students hope to begin beta testing next summer.

Want to learn more?

Explore prototyping and field implementation in OpenCourseWare’s Prototypes to Products class. Also check out the resources offered by the website for the class textbook, Product Design and Development, by Karl Ulrich and Steven D. Eppinger.

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DIY IAP: Build an Electric Unicycle (Or Just Watch the Video)!

by Jay London on January 11, 2012

in Design,Engineering,IAP,In the News,Modern Geekhood,Research,Student Life,Transportation

Photo Credit: Stephan Boyer, Double Dispatch blog

Recent data shows that thousands of commuters in Boston-Cambridge area ride their bicycle to work, with ridership more the doubling since 2007. But unicycle ridership? Not current data exists.

Meet Stephan Boyer, a third-year student in the School of Engineering who has created The Bullet, a sort of unicycle-meets-Segway device that can hit 15 miles per hour and can travel for five miles on a single charge.

The Bullet, an electric unicycle with a safety kill switch, does some self-balancing, with components that help prevent the device from falling forward or backward (good luck if you’re falling left or right!). Boyer uses the Bullet to travel around campus, even relying on semantics to travel inside.

Boyer writes on his Double Dispatch blog:

“Bullet is the primary way I navigate MIT and the surrounding Cambridge area. I often zoom past students, faculty, custodians, and tourists, with generally positive reactions from everyone. I’ve been told one can be fined for riding a scooter in the Infinite Corridor. Fortunately, Bullet ain’t no scooter.”

Boyer currently has no plan to market the Bullet for commercial use, but estimates the device cost only a few hundred dollars to build. Boyer (and Slice) urges caution to any burgeoning uni-enthusiasts and likens navigating the Bullet to learning to ride a bike with no hands.

“Unfortunately, one cannot simply pick up a self-balancing unicycle and ride it with ease. It took me several hours to be able to ride in a straight line without crashing, and it took several days to learn how to turn in a controlled manner. Many of my friends have tried riding it, usually with little success (including some actual unicyclers).”

For more information on how the Bullet was assembled, including its kit list and software, and some helpful riding tips, visit Boyer’s Double Dispatch blog entry.

Editor’s note: In honor of MIT’s Independent Activities Period (IAP) in January, Slice is focusing on activities you can do yourself and on the experiences of students serving this month as externs with alumni in their workplaces. Stay tuned!

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DIY IAP: Make a Folding Ukulele

by Nancy DuVergne Smith on January 4, 2012

in Engineering,IAP,In the News

Brian Chan ’02, SM ’04, PhD ’09 has done it again. The origami master who now designs graphics, metal and paper items, and products has a new invention—a quick-fab instrument that you can make yourself and then fold and toss in your backpack so it’s ready when you want to make music.

Make a ukulele in about half a day.

Make a ukulele in about half a day.

Chan designed the Folding Ukulele to be made from laser-cut bamboo plywood, and the kit, which takes about half a day to assemble, is offered online from Ponoko, a New Zealand-based software company that allows creative types to make prototypes of objects as small as jewelry or as large as furniture.

Self described as a maker of anything, Chan is a Cambridge-based freelance engineer and artist who has won honors for mobile-phone concept designs and for his idea for using thermal depolymerization to produce biofuels while sequestering carbon pollution. He’s  also recently begun working with the MIT Hobby Shop.

You can watch this video to see Chan explain the instrument, demonstrate how to fold it, and hear what it sounds like.

And you can build it too—Kits are available at Ponoko.

See some of Brian’s recent work and follow him on Facebook or Twitter for updates.

Editor’s note: In honor of MIT’s Independent Activities Period (IAP) in January, Slice  is focusing on activities you can do yourself and on the experiences of students serving this month as externs with alumni in their workplaces. Stay tuned!

 

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Electric Grid’s Future: Increased Risk of Attack

by Jay London on December 14, 2011

in Economics,Energy,Engineering,In the News,Research

Despite growing smarter, the U.S. electric grid is expected to become more vulnerable and a prime target for a cyber attacks, according to a new report from the MIT Energy Initiative. The report, “The Future of the Electric Grid,” was published on Dec. 5 and cites weaknesses in oversight, processes, new communication devices, and the grid’s existing physical environment.

The study, led by MIT professors John Kassakian and Richard Schmalensee, focuses on the electric grid’s challenges over the next 20 years, including safeguarding the existing power structure, the rising prices in fossil fuels, and in the potential influx of renewable energy sources. The 268-page report also calls for the designation of a single federal agency to combat cyber attacks. President Barack Obama and his administration have advocated for the Department of Homeland Security to take the lead; other members of Congress would prefer the Department of Energy or the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

From The Future of the Electric Grid:

“This lack of a single operational entity with responsibility for grid cyber-security preparedness as well as response and recovery creates a security vulnerability in a highly interconnected electric power system comprising generation, transmission, and distribution.”

The report criticizes the current kilowatt/hour pricing system and concludes that the while the power grid is adequate for meeting today’s power needs, it will have trouble integrating alternative power sources like wind and solar. It also acknowledges that a cyber-attack will eventually succeed, and an investment of about $3.7 billion is needed to adequately secure the grid from attack.

From the report:

“Perfect protection from cyber-attacks is not possible. It is thus important for the involved government agencies, working with the private sector in a coordinated fashion, to support the research necessary to develop best practices for response to and recovery from cyber-attacks on transmission and distribution systems, so that such practices can be widely deployed.”

“The Future of the Electric Grid” is the sixth in the MIT Energy Initiative’s future-focused series, which has also studied natural gas, nuclear fuel, and transportation. For more information, view the report or watch a video discussing the report’s findings.

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Lesser-Known Technology Laws and Other MIT WebPub Wisdom

by Nancy DuVergne Smith on December 13, 2011

in Engineering

Guest Blogger: Elizabeth E. McManus, MIT Information Services & Technology

We’ve all experienced with the famous Murphy’s Law eponym: ‘Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.’ It’s a great law because it is something everyone faces at one time or another, but there are other laws that I thought I would share since they describe common situations managing technology-related projects. A few of my favorite laws*:

Parkinson’s Law: Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

Wadsworth Constant: The constant is 30 percent, which is alleged to be the portion of an Internet video that can be skipped at the beginning without missing anything important.

Mooers’ Law: An information retrieval system will tend not to be used whenever it is more painful and troublesome for a customer to have information than for him/her not to have it.

Hick’s Law: Describes the time it takes for a person to make a decision as a result of the possible choices he or she has. The more options someone has, the longer it takes for decisions to be made.

Gall’s Law: A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work; you have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.

Brook’s Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes the project delivered later. Often people assume that adding more people late to a project will cause the project to speed up, but the ramp-up time for initiating someone to the project, as well as the change in communication dynamics often causes the opposite to be true.

Amara’s Law: We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.

Dunbar’s Number: The maximum amount of stable, social connections someone can sustain. While there is no definitive number, most people estimate this number to be around 150. This number was identified by Robin Dubar in 1992, but it is interesting to reflect on this number with the rise of connections people have made through social media channels like Facebook and Twitter.

Hofstadter’s Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.

Segal’s Law: A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure. In other words, conflicting info adds another layer of confusion.

Sowa’s Law: Whenever a major organization develops a new system as an official standard for X, the primary result is the widespread adoption of some simpler system as a de facto standard for X.

*Definitions provided by Wikipedia

Editor’s Note: For more digital wisdom, read the MIT Web Publishers User Group blog, MIT WebPub, where this post first appeared, watch their Tech TV videos,  or check out their Facebook page.

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MIT Students Bring Clean Water to Remote Ugandan Village

by Amy Marcott on December 12, 2011

in Design,Engineering,Health,Public Service,Student Life,Travel

Guest bloggers: Marisa Simmons ’13 and Steven Pennybaker ’12

EWB Members building prototype tanks. Photo: Steven Pennybaker.

Images this page: Engineers Without Borders members build prototype tanks to aid Ugandan residents. Photos: Steven Pennybaker.

Students from the MIT chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB) have helped bring clean, usable water to a remote Ugandan village in an ongoing project that has students and community members working together to achieve the goal.

This past summer, the MIT chapter sent two teams to continue work on rainwater harvesting and alternative energy in Ddegeya, Uganda. This is the third year EWB students have worked in the country, and each year the partnership grows stronger. Last year, a 10,000-liter rainwater harvesting tank was installed in the village. EWB hopes to expand rainwater harvesting in Ddegeya, but in a more economical and sustainable manner. After research and collaboration with other NGOs in the country, EWB decided to pursue a partially underground tank system. This design minimizes the resources and costs associated with the tanks.

In addition to technical design, EWB has worked extensively with the community to develop an acceptable distribution model for the tanks. A Water Projects Board, made up of respected members of the community and established in summer 2010, oversees the existing project and helps EWB work on new endeavors. Initially, local residents were only interested in household tanks, but after discussion about EWB and community resources, Ugandans decided communal tanks would be more effective. Locations were then measured and evaluated.

EWB Members building prototype tanks. Photo: Steven Pennybaker.The different components of the tank, including tank lining, pumps, and first-flush systems were also tested and presented to the community for feedback. Each component was evaluated for ease of manufacture and use.

EWB partnered with students from Uganda’s Makerere University to work with the residents on developing prototypes. While in Ddegeya, this team built both a ferrocement and a clay tank prototype. The ferrocement tank consisted of cement with a steel mesh internal support, while the clay tank was made using local clay. Different types of pumps were also built using materials available in the nearby town of Masaka. The pumps built by the MIT team were significantly cheaper than the consumer water pumps available. Finally, two types of first-flush systems, a way to prevent the dirt from roofs from collecting inside the tank, were also built and tested.

While in Uganda, the MIT-EWB team also determined the best houses to use for rainwater catchment. Dwellings were chosen in terms of roof size, location, and Water Projects Board recommendations. Students spent time getting community feedback in terms of the projects’ cost and benefits to those in Ddegeya.

After all prototypes were made, the students presented them to the community, which provided input as to the usability of the design. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Despite more than 6,000 miles separating Ddegeya and MIT, the two communities continue to work together to implement the changes. EWB hopes to travel back to Uganda in January 2012 to implement the designs and build five systems including a 5,000-liter tank, pump, first flush, and gutters.

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