End of the Line Engineering.com

Technical innovation in NASCAR has been a feature of the sport since its inception in 1949. Finding a competitive edge meant pushing rules to their limits and beyond, making mechanics as much the stars of the sport is drivers. 
Today’s next-generation NASCAR cup series cars however, are factory built, largely interchangeable and are no longer fabricated by race teams themselves. Similar cars means very close racing, creating a grand spectacle for fans. For many, putting the sport primarily into the hands of the drivers is a step forward, but for fans that love the engineering side of the sport, something has been lost. 
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If you follow the electric vehicle market anywhere in the world today, it’s pretty much bad news these days. That’s especially true in America, where slowing production and layoffs at Tesla, Ford and GM are the inevitable result of dramatically softening sales.
The demand for lower-priced vehicles is high, but with current technology, so is the EV MSRP.
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Want to watch this podcast as a video? End of the Line is available on engineering.com TV along with all of our other shows such as This Week in Engineering, Designing the Future, and, Manufacturing the Future.

Everyone wants the universal household robot. According to Jim Anderton, for widespread adoption, they are going to have to have a price point that allows monthly financing or lease payments that are roughly similar to a car, suggesting that manufacturers will need to retail units in the neighbourhood of $ 40,000 to get widescale uptake. 
If designed properly, the machines could be durable enough to carry a residual value, creating a secondary market for used equipment, to allow monthly payments that could be affordable for the majority of households.
To achieve this, the robot makers are going to have to stop thinking like NASA, and rethink things like titanium and carbon fiber. Commodity plastic resins, utility grade aluminum alloys and critically, affordable batteries will be the way forward. 
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Want to watch this podcast as a video? End of the Line is available on engineering.com TV along with all of our other shows such as This Week in Engineering, Designing the Future, and, Manufacturing the Future.

The 20th century was defined by engineering. Mass production of consumer goods, atomic energy, and the development of computer data processing built the world we know today.
In the 21st century, three technologies will define the future: controlled nuclear fusion, artificial intelligence, and a specific class of robot: humanoid, general purpose, electrically actuated robots that operate without code, and function the way humans do.
The impact of these technologies is impossible to predict with certainty, but the latter two innovations, AI and humanoid robotics, will change the nature of work in ways that current makers of industrial SCARA robots can’t imagine.
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Iran launched a mass drone attack on Israel, with some of the slowest flying offensive aerial vehicles deployed since the Zeppelin raids of World War I.
The result was the loss of the majority of the drones, with very little damage inflicted on targets.
But the attack served a useful political purpose for Tehran, and it suggests that massed attacks of low cost drones against sophisticated defence systems can be stopped, but ironically, may also be useful politically for the attacking nation, even if the attacks fail.
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A Ukrainian made reduction light sport aircraft, the Aeroprakt A-22, appears to have been the platform for a drone attack on a Russian factory in Tataristan, only 800 miles behind the lines and deep inside Russia. While hardly a high-performance platform for drone conversion, these are light sport aircraft has several advantages.
The aircraft is cheap and simple, and uses mechanical flight controls that are relatively easy to automate. It uses no special materials and a commercially available engine, and in flight, is indistinguishable to radar from aircraft and helicopters. The attack was highly successful, and it’s likely that more will be seen on the battlefield in the future
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Want to watch this podcast as a video? End of the Line is available on engineering.com TV along with all of our other shows such as This Week in Engineering, Designing the Future, and, Manufacturing the Future.