ClearFlame, a recipient of The TomKat Center's Innovation Transfer Program which assists Stanford faculty, staff and students in commercializing breakthrough technologies and innovations in sustainability, is developing a high-temperature combustion system for trucks that run on renewable fuels. With the Stanford grads technology, about 10 percent of the engine components change and the engine prototypes have shown a 25 percent higher torque, meaning better engine performance. Link
Scientists at Stanford and SLAC identified which pairs of atoms in a catalyst nanoparticle are most active in a reaction that breaks down a harmful exhaust gas in catalytic converters. The most active particles contained the biggest proportion of one particular atomic configuration.
In this Future of Everything podcast on AI and Safety-Critical Systems, Mykel Kochenderfer discusses challenges building and validating trustworthy, safe autonomous technology in particular for commercial air transport systems and how AI, empowered by algorithms such as "dynamic programming," can make autonomous systems safer. Link
A Stanford team developed a framework for routing a large fleet of delivery drones to hitch rides on public transit vehicles to save energy and increase flight range. Delivery trucks represent 7 percent of U.S. traffic but account for 28 percent of the nation's congestion. The algorithms developed by the team combines the last mile flexibility of drones with the long-haul capacity of ground-based vehicles. Link
A new electrolyte design by Stanford researchers boosts performance of lithium metal batteries which is promising for electric vehicles where weight and volume are important factors. The novel synthetic compound, abbreviated FDMB, uses fluorine atoms that can be readily produced in bulk. The research team reported dramatic results with the electrolyte tested in a lithium metal battery. Link
Please join us on Wednesday, August 19 at 12:00 PM PDT for our next webinar with Matt Brown, Ph.D. candidate in Mechanical Engineering in Prof.
Stanford's Precourt Institute for Energy's Global Energy Forum is launching a series of live interviews with global thought leaders on the future of energy every other Tuesday starting June 9 with Ernest Moniz, Steven Chu on June 23 and Charles "Chad" Holliday on July 7. The new series is free and open to the public online. Registration is required.
Marco Pavone and Jeannette Bohg, Stanford, along with Luca Carlone and Alberto Rodriguez, MIT, host this virtual robotic seminar series Friday at 10:00 a.m. PDT (1:00 p.m. EDT). The June 12 seminar is with Anca Dragan, assistant professor, electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley. See the website here for upcoming talks, past recordings, along with the live streaming link.
At our May webinar, Grace Gao, assistant professor, aeronautics and astronautics and director of the Stanford Navigation and Autonomous Vehicles Lab discussed her work on reliable and safe positioning and navigation for autonomous systems. Gao provided examples of model-driven, data-driven and proof-based approaches for intelligently fusing GPS, LiDAR, vision and inertial measurements.
