Chief Scientist: we need to transform our world into a sustainable ‘electric planet’
I want you to imagine a highway exclusively devoted to delivering the world’s energy.
Robot rental program for Australian manufacturers announced
Collaborative robot manufacturer Universal Robots has announced a leasing program in partnership with vendor finance company DLL.
Geelong precision farming startup begins trials
Deakin University-based IoT company Strut has begun a three-month trial of its ground-based sensor products, which update farmers on soil moisture and temperature, humidity and air temperature. The company was founded by four engineers to make a simple precision agriculture offering, and went through Deakin’s three-month Spark accelerator program last year. Strut is based…
Small world: atom-scale materials are the next tech frontier
By Baohua Jia, Professor, Swinburne University of Technology Every age in the history of human civilisation has a signature material, from the Stone Age, to the Bronze and Iron Ages. We might even call today’s information-driven society the Silicon Age. Since the 1960s, silicon nanostructures, the building-blocks of microchips, have supercharged the development of electronics, communications,…
Laminex to conduct feasibility study for co-generation plant at Toolara
Laminex Australia has been awarded a $559,000 grant from the Queensland government to investigate waste-powered onsite energy at its Toolara site, near Gympie.
Old tyres given new life in blast-resistant walls
Tests of a spray-on product using recycled tyres are being conducted on Tuesday morning at the country’s only blast simulation facility. The National Facility for Physical Blast Simulation at the University of Wollongong is hosting trials of a sprayable version of Protectiflex, a cementitious composite material using recycled tyre rubber and fibres. The product…
Crane tech company gets $5 million venture backing, will hire three new staff
Blackbird Ventures has made a $5 million investment in West Australian crane innovator Roborigger.
Go local: how to keep the power on when disaster hits
To make the system more resilient, we need to ensure a local area can maintain power even when power is cut off elsewhere. This is feasible with microgrids.
Electric car sales tripled last year. Here’s what we can do to keep them growing
By Gail Broadbent, PhD candidate Faculty of Science UNSW, and Graciela Metternicht, Professor of Environmental Geography, School of Biological Earth and Environmental Sciences, UNSW A total of 6718 electric vehicles were sold in Australia in 2019. That’s three times as many as in 2018, but it’s still small beer. More than a million fossil-fueled light vehicles…
First fuselage for Loyal Wingman program completed
Boeing has announced completion of a fuselage structural assembly for the first of three prototypes for the Loyal Wingman program with the Royal Australian Air Force. “The partnership with Boeing is key to building our understanding of not just the operational implications for these sorts of vehicles, but also making us a smart customer…