Category: Innovation

Recently we wrote about both hydrogen power and the new eVTOL flying taxi’s. Now, those two worlds have collided in a fascinating way.

A flying-car-like vertical takeoff aircraft created by Joby Aviation has completed a groundbreaking 523-mile test flight using hydrogen power. The aircraft, which reportedly emitted only water vapor, is being promoted as a more environmentally friendly alternative to traditional gas-powered jets for mid-range, regional travel. Although there are ongoing concerns about the long-term viability of hydrogen power at scale, this test flight demonstrates that it is possible to retrofit existing electric aircraft with hydrogen fuel cells to extend their range effectively.

Joby is among several companies developing air taxi services using vertical takeoff and landing vehicles (VTOLs). Previously, Joby focused on fully electric battery-powered aircraft with a range of about 100 miles, designed for intra-city transport and trips to major airports. For the new test flight, Joby modified a pre-production prototype of its battery-electric aircraft with a liquid hydrogen fuel tank and fuel system. This hydrogen-powered VTOL successfully completed a 523-mile flight above Marina, California, with no in-flight emissions and landed with 10% of its hydrogen fuel remaining.

Related: Flying Cars… Sort Of

Joby accelerated its hydrogen power exploration in 2022 by acquiring hydrogen-powered aircraft startup H2Fly, which completed the first piloted flight of a liquid hydrogen-powered electric aircraft last year. Since then, two other California startups have tested hydrogen fuel for propeller planes, with Universal Hydrogen reportedly flying at altitudes up to 10,000 feet and speeds around 170 knots (195 mph). Joby’s test flight, however, marks the first reported instance of a VTOL aircraft completing a test flight using hydrogen power.

“Traveling by air is central to human progress, but we need to find ways to make it cleaner,” Joby CEO JoeBen Bevirt said in a press release. “With our battery-electric air taxi set to fundamentally change the way we move around cities, we’re excited to now be building a technology stack that could redefine regional travel using hydrogen-electric aircraft.”

Hydrogen power has the potential to extend the range of VTOLs, making regional travel between cities more feasible. Joby envisions a future where hydrogen VTOLs could transport commuters between cities like Baltimore and Boston or Nashville and New Orleans. These hydrogen-powered aircraft could utilize much of the same infrastructure currently being built for electric models.

Despite the promising environmental benefits, hydrogen power remains significantly more expensive to produce than its electric or fossil fuel counterparts. Nonetheless, proponents believe it could help reduce CO2 emissions in the transportation sector. Aircraft accounted for around 2% of global CO2 emissions in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency, and this percentage is expected to rise as air travel rebounds from the Covid-19 pandemic.

In summary, hydrogen power could reduce emissions and extend the range of VTOLs, presenting a promising future for cleaner regional air travel. However, the high production costs of hydrogen fuel continue to pose a significant challenge.

Some tropical storms rapidly become category five hurricanes. Cutting-edge saildrones are revealing how this happens.

Hurricane Otis hit southern Mexico on October 25, 2023, with 165mph (270km/h) winds, killing at least 27 people and causing widespread damage and power outages in Acapulco. NOAA described Otis as a “life-threatening storm surge” with destructive winds and heavy rainfall, leading to flash flooding and mudslides. Otis intensified by 110mph (177km/h) within 24 hours.

Scientists aim to understand why these storms intensify so quickly. NOAA, partnering with Saildrone, uses seafaring drones to collect oceanic and atmospheric data. Saildrones, which resemble sailboats and range from 23ft (7m) to 65ft (20m), use wind propulsion and solar-powered sensors to measure hurricane paths and intensity changes. They also analyze ocean currents, creating a comprehensive picture of the air and water column.

The mission is not about predicting hurricanes but improving future hurricane modeling by studying their intensification. Hurricanes form over warm waters, where evaporating water creates low pressure, drawing in more air and forming storms. When wind speeds reach 74mph (119km/h), it becomes a hurricane. Kerry Emanuel from MIT notes the importance of understanding heat transfer from the ocean to the atmosphere, a gap the saildrones aim to fill.

NASA has invested $725,000 in a new rocket system to address one of the major challenges of sending humans to Mars: travel time.

Currently, a round-trip to Mars takes nearly two years, posing significant health risks for astronauts, including exposure to high levels of solar and cosmic radiation, zero gravity effects, and prolonged isolation. Space radiation is particularly concerning, as six months in space exposes astronauts to the equivalent of 1,000 chest X-rays, increasing the risk of cancer, nervous system damage, bone loss, and heart disease.

To shorten the trip, NASA is collaborating with Howe Industries to develop the Pulsed Plasma Rocket (PPR), a propulsion system using pulses of superheated plasma to generate efficient thrust. Funded by the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program, the PPR is in phase two of development, focusing on optimizing engine design, conducting proof-of-concept experiments, and designing a PPR-powered, shielded spaceship for Mars missions.

The PPR’s significant advantage is its ability to make a spacecraft travel extremely fast, with both high thrust and high specific impulse. It generates 10,000 newtons of thrust with a specific impulse of 5,000 seconds, enabling a spacecraft to travel approximately 100,000 miles per hour.

While it will likely take a couple of decades before the PPR is ready for spaceflight, once available, it will significantly expand the range of human space exploration.

Before Hugh Herr became a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he was a promising rock climber. However, at age 17, he lost both his legs below the knee to frostbite after being trapped in a blizzard during a climb. Since then, he has dedicated himself to developing prosthetic legs that function and feel like natural limbs. His efforts appear to have succeeded.

State-of-the-art prosthetic limbs can help individuals with amputations achieve a natural walking gait, but they don’t provide full neural control. Instead, they rely on robotic sensors and controllers which do not allow for much agility.

MIT researchers, in collaboration with Brigham and Women’s Hospital, have developed a new surgical intervention and neuroprosthetic interface that allows a prosthetic leg to be driven by the body’s own nervous system. This surgery reconnects muscles in the residual limb, enabling patients to receive proprioceptive feedback about their prosthetic limb’s position.

In the study, published in Nature Medicine, seven patients underwent this surgery. The MIT team found they could walk faster, avoid obstacles, and climb stairs more naturally than those with traditional amputations.

“This is the first prosthetic study in history that shows a leg prosthesis under full neural modulation, where a biomimetic gait emerges. No one has been able to show this level of brain control that produces a natural gait, where the human’s nervous system is controlling the movement, not a robotic control algorithm,” says Herr, who is the co-director of the K. Lisa Yang Center for Bionics at MIT and senior author of the study.

Patients experienced less pain and muscle atrophy after the surgery, known as the agonist-antagonist myoneural interface (AMI). So far, about 60 patients worldwide have received this surgery, also applicable for arm amputations.

The researchers found that patients with the AMI surgery could more precisely control their amputated limb muscles. These muscles produced electrical signals similar to those from intact limbs. Encouraged by those results, the researchers investigated whether the electrical signals could not only generate commands for a prosthetic limb but also provide the user with feedback about the limb’s position in space. This proprioceptive feedback would enable the wearer to adjust their gait voluntarily as needed.

This theory was validated when individuals with the AMI interface walked faster, navigated obstacles more easily, and exhibited more natural movements than those with traditional prosthetics. Despite providing less than 20 percent of the normal sensory feedback, the AMI interface enabled natural biomimetic behaviors to emerge.

Each year, one million people in the U.S. undergo chemotherapy. Globally, cancer is the leading cause of death, claiming 10 million lives in 2020.

Inspired by the need to improve cancer treatment, researchers at MIT developed a portable monitor to help patients track their white blood cell count. This device could potentially reduce hospitalizations by 50% in cancer cases.

Leuko Labs was founded at the Madrid-MIT M+ Vision Consortium (MIT linQ), an initiative that promotes medical entrepreneurship by connecting researchers with MIT faculty to address critical medical issues. Leuko’s founders targeted the challenge of monitoring white blood cell count, which currently relies on blood draws.

Cancer patients receive chemotherapy about every 21 days, which lowers their white blood cell count and increases infection risk. Leuko co-founder Carlos Castro-Gonzalez highlighted that one in six cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy develops an infection due to critically low white blood cell levels, sometimes resulting in death from treatment rather than the disease.

Monitoring white blood cell count could prevent many infections in chemotherapy patients. Leuko developed a noninvasive device allowing patients to frequently check their white blood cell count, improving the precision of chemotherapy dosages. Castro-Gonzalez found that many patients could tolerate higher chemotherapy doses during his clinical rotations, leading him to the MIT linQ health care innovation program.

PointCheck, an optics-based device, checks white blood cell count through the fingernail. It resembles a futuristic fingerprint scanner and can detect white blood cells as they pass through the narrow capillaries at the base of the nail. Although it can’t provide an exact count, it can determine if patients are above or below the dangerous threshold of 500 neutrophils, the most common type of white blood cell.

Leuko Labs plans to measure other blood components in the future but must first pass a rigorous FDA approval process. PointCheck is still investigational, with a study to be submitted to the FDA this year. Previous studies showed the device was 95% accurate.

PointCheck could significantly improve cancer treatment and reduce major complications, benefiting millions of patients and doctors worldwide.