August 18, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

If only our cars COULD be powered with a $1 bill.  I have been stuffing $50's in my car's tank, and I bet that you have been too for a "fill up" recently.  I called the Cherryland Electric Cooperative which provides the electric power to my workshop and the neighborhood I live in to see what the latest rules are for selling electricity to the grid.  Having operated powerplants up to 100 MW, I am considering generating a little bit of electricity in my spare time to sell to the grid.  Perhaps this will become a new cottage industry.  The person who ans...Read More
Industries: Machine Control

August 13, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

The new symbol of USA national independence.
 
Ensuring our nation's security and prosperity could be as simple as a windmill.  Talk of President' having making the hard choices that will break our nation's dependence on foreign owned oil and ensure our economic prosperity by meeting tomorrow's energy needs is good, but makes it sound a lot more difficult than it is. 

Modern designed windmills are well suited to the task and are very simple and readily available.  How many would you like?  Wind turbine generators and their associated equipment such as concrete anchors, steel towers, etc, can be build by workers...Read More
Industries: Machine Control

August 11, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

MSWord Clip Art Photo

GRADUATE, THEN ON TO OJT (on the job training)
OK, so graduating from college has turned out to be just the start of your real world education. You thought you were done with textbooks, lab fees, and classrooms. Then you discover that to keep your edge in fields like robotics, where the technology is constantly changing, you have traded textbooks for technical manuals and data sheets. You have traded lab fees for piles of wrecked test equipment and burned out components tested to destruction, and time that was spent in class rooms is now time spent at technical conferences and seminars.

Learning, in a constantly changing field, neve...Read More
Industries: Machine Control

August 8, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

BigDog - Boston Dynamics

ROBOTS WITH LEGS
Wheels only get you so far on the planet surface.  Tank treads get you a little farther.  To go everywhere you need legs.  The US Army has found itself needing to go places that only pack mules can go.  DARPA money is allowing Boston Dynamics to look into what it would take to build robotic pack mules for the US Army and they have made remarkable progress in the area of robots with legs.  BigDog, shown in the ...Read More
Industries: Machine Control

August 6, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

CONNECTIONS
Carole Heiderer, (231) 883-3301 a Realtor in the Traverse City, MI area, is an AIM Team supporter and widow of the developer of the HMMWV. From talking to her I get the impression that her whole life, the secrets of government research and development have swirled around her. She is a supporter of our project because we apparently have picked up where her husband left off. The last project he was working on and died before finishing was called the "black box" which would allow HMMWV's to drive themselves. The last time she saw it, it was being sent to a small electronics company in NJ to see if they could reverse engineer it and preserve her patent rights to the design. ...Read More
Industries: Machine Control