MEDOLOGY
- Flike personal tricopter gets first manned flight test
- New Lenses Promise Painless Procedure For Bionic Vision
- World's First Hydrogen-Powered Drone Can Fly For Four Hours
| A team of flight enthusiasts from Hungary have just had their first manned flight of the Flike. This is a personal tricopter concept and it has taken less than one year to get from the drawing board to an actual flight.  [Image Courtesy of Flike] Bay Zoltan Nonprofit Ltd are state owned in Hungary and they managed to get the first manned flight test off the ground in northeast Hungary at the Miskolc Airfield. The Flike is named after fly-bike and it took off the ground with a take-off weight of 210kg. The flight wasn't a long one, but it did take off from the ground and landed safely. During the brief flight the pilot showed the hovering along with manoeuvring capabilities while at the same time being able to compensate for wind. The flight lasted for a total of one and a half minutes.  [Image Courtesy of Flike] The Flike has six rotors that are paired in a coaxial arrangement and these are driven directly via individual electric disc motors. Lithium polymer batteries power the Flike and the designers say that they last for about 15 to 20 minutes hovering or 30 to 40 of cruise flying.  [Image Courtesy of Flike] The Flike is controlled by changing the rotation speed of the crafts individual rotors and this allows the craft to fly in the air in much the same way as a conventional helicopter. It is capable of rolling, hovering, drift, yaw, turn, dive, bank and sidle. It does have other capabilities but the team haven't made these known just yet.  [Image Courtesy of Flike] It has a flight management computer and this can take care of the stability of the craft along with the altitude and the lateral position. The team behind the Flike claim that riding it will be just as easy as riding on a bike. It also comes with emergency lift to stop a crash happening should one of the electric motors fail. Now that that Flike has completed its first flight the team behind it are planning on building another prototype with a design and features that are very similar to what they planned for the commercial version. The designers are also hoping to start a start-up company and get investors on-board. Via [Flike] |
| A new medical invention claims to keep your vision 100% perfect for the rest of your life. An optometrist from British Columbia, Canada, believes to have invented corrective eye lenses that will revolutionize healthcare around the world. Dr. Garth Webb created the Ocumetics Bionic Lens that can make you see three times better than 20/20 vision. So not only would these new lenses correct sight problems like nearsightedness and farsightedness but would go way beyond, giving humans "bionic" vision. With this invention, the use of glasses or contact lenses would no longer be necessary for the rest of our lives. Photo credit: Darryl Dyck / Canadian Press "This is vision enhancement that the world has never seen before," Webb told CBC. "If you can just barely see the clock at 10 feet, when you get the Bionic Lens you can see the clock at 30 feet away." Created at the Ocumetics Technology Corp., the Ocumetics Bionic Lens looks like a small button that replaces your original lens. It is inserted during an eight-minute eye surgery, very similar to a cataract surgery, that the doctor claims to be painless. The patient's sight would be corrected immediately without the need of any further procedures. The artificial lens replaces the eye's natural lens. Therefore, this surgery would also prevent the person from developing cataracts. The only downside to it is that only people over 25 could do the surgery, since the eye is still under development before that age. According to the CBC News, eight years of research and three million dollars were invested to create these new lenses. The invention was presented by Webb to other 14 ophthalmologists in April during an annual conference of the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery and they were clearly impressed. According to the doctor, the lens will be first tested in animals and then in blind human eyes. Then the company will seek Canadian approval for marketing the product which could be available in 2017. Source: CBC News |
| Drones can be quite a lot of fun, but one of the most common problems with them is that they have little autonomy for flight, so you can only use them for about 20 minutes before they need to be charged. But a drone called Hycopter was made exactly in order to change that reality. Horizon Energy Systems's proposal was to create an unmanned aircraft with enough fuel to stay up to four hours in the air using hydrogen. Image courtesy of Horizon Energy Systems Hycopter's design has two structures that resemble large fluorescent lamps, but are actually tubes that hold up to 120g of hydrogen. During the flight, a lightweight lithium polymer hybrid fuel cell turns the gas into power. One of the main problems with aircraft fuel is it's weight that should also be taken into consideration when calculating flight time but the hydrogen – for being the lightest gas available – is more cost-effective. The power produced by the amount of hydrogen carried by Hycopter is equivalent to three kilograms of regular lithium ion batteries. The drone weighs 5kg and can fly continuously for up to 4 hours. Other aircraft that use common lithium batteries to store electricity, have a short autonomy of up to half an hour before having to be charged. The drone is designed to carry a load of up to 1 kg, which reduces it's autonomy to 2.5 hours. Image courtesy of Horizon Energy Systems Horizon Energy Systems built this drone for military use. Its main uses are aimed towards security, equipment safety and inspection, and the mapping of remote areas. The product is in its final development phase and its first prototype should be tested in the next few months. The company is already taking pre-orders, but the final price has not yet been decided. Source: Horizon Unmanned Systems Via: Geek |
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