This article is obtained from here.

With a wide range of high-pressure responsibilities, project managers are some of the most important players in a construction firm. They spend their time managing employees, working with clients, reporting to superiors, and making sure everything goes according to plan.

Once upon a time, there was a hard limit to the amount of work a project manager could take on. PMs were shackled by in-office land lines and pen-and-paper record keeping. Collaboration with clients and subcontractors had to be face-to-face. Today however, collaboration and record keeping can occur anytime, anywhere. With advanced collaborative capabilities, expectations for project managers are sky high, and only PMs with the best tech can keep up. Let’s see how modern software has reinvented the project manager:

1. Project Planning

Every project begins with an idea, and it’s up to the project manager to turn that idea into a reality. To actively collaborate with stakeholders, PMs needs a streamlined communication tool. PMs and clients should be able to share and review blueprints, budgets, records and other crucial data in real-time. These early communications set a precedent of total collaboration so you can ensure that client feedback is considered at every stage.

2. Project Coordination

Once you’ve planned out the details of your project, it’s up to the project manager to make the arrangements and keep things running smoothly. It takes more than a simple collaborative tool to effectively manage employees, contractors and consultants. Robust software with advanced functions and integrated apps are essential for keeping everyone on track. Mobile reporting apps, for example, have the power to ‘stream’ relevant data from the jobsite to the office. PMs (and their supervisors) gain more access to information in less time.

3. Reporting & Accountability

It’s nearly impossible for a project manager to memorize every aspect of day-to-day operations. Yet, they’re expected to consistently advise clients, manage staff and inform their supervisors. Strong management software makes it easy to find and organize relevant project data. Advanced systems even let you format and send out reports based on standardized data. With the latest technology, project managers can keep meticulous records without breaking a sweat!

Overall, adopting these tools cuts out wasted time and empowers collaboration. You’re the project “leader,” after all, and it’s time to start leading. Want to learn more about project management technology? Check out our top 5 tips to improve construction management.

By Evan Ackerman

This article is obtained from here.

A cyclocopter is a weird sort of aircraft that uses airfoils rotating around a horizontal axis to generate lift and thrust. The concept was developed about a century ago, but these things are tricky to build and fly, so they haven’t, er, taken off as much as helicopters have. In fact, there’s only a small handful of research groups working on cyclocopters at all, and at the moment, they’re focusing on small scales. Professor Moble Benedict and graduate students Carl Runco and David Coleman at Texas A&M’s Advanced Vertical Flight Laboratory has been testing the smallest cyclocopter ever developed: It’s just 29 grams in mass, and could be a tiny step towards replacing helicopters and multirotors with something better.

If it’s still not clear how it actually flies and maneuvers, this diagram might help:

Image: Moble Benedict/Texas A&M

The cycloidal rotor (left) with key components identified. Blade kinematics (right) and forces on a cycloidal rotor in hover.

A single cycloidal rotor, or cyclorotor, consists of multiple airfoils attached to a frame that turns around in a circle very fast. The airfoils produce lift and thrust as they move through the air, and because each blade can pivot, that thrust that can be directed in any direction perpendicular to the cyclorotor. Or, as Benedict explains, “With the blades cyclically pitched such that each blade has a positive geometric angle of attack at the top and bottom of the circular trajectory, a net thrust is produced.” The thrust vectoring is instant, making the cyclocopter very maneuverable, and (among other advantages) the vehicle can transition from, say, stable hovering to high-speed forward flight without needing to pitch itself over like a helicopter or multirotor aircraft. The little rotor on the back stabilizes the pitch.

Benedict has been working on cyclocopters for years; we wrote about a quad-cyclocopter that he developed at the University of Maryland a while back. That was, in fact, the first successful flight test of a cycloidal-rotor based aircraft and along with Dr. Benedict, other people involved in that effort were Elena Shrestha, Dr. Vikram Hrishikeshavan and Dr. Inderjit Chopra. At 800 grams, it wasn’t what you’d call large, but cyclocopters get particularly interesting at very small scales because of their combination of very high maneuverability and potential for excellent efficiency. They’re also more stable, more space efficient, and they’re theoretically quieter and capable of a higher top speed than helicopters are.

Cyclocopters sound pretty great, right? So our first question for Benedict was this:

IEEE Spectrum: Why aren’t we all flying cyclopters right now, instead of helicopters and multirotors?

Moble Benedict: Even though people were trying to explore cyclorotors 100 years back, we have only started looking at this concept seriously now. What happened in the early 20th century is that helicopters became successful before cyclocopters and then people naturally lost interest in pursuing this concept.

One of the biggest structural issues in cyclorotors is the fact that blades have to take large transverse centrifugal bending loads, and 100 years ago, we did not have the materials that had the strength-to-weight ratio to do that. Today, with composites and so on, it is possible, and this is a key enabler for the present cyclorotors. Also, all the successful cyclocopters built so far needed electronic onboard feedback stabilization, unlike helicopters, which can be passively stabilized. So a cyclocopter idea was far too advanced for its time when it was introduced.

Can you describe the characteristics of the cyclocopter that give it advantages over multirotors and helicopters?

A cycloidal rotor can achieve higher hover efficiency than a conventional rotor at smaller scales, because of the uniform aerodynamic conditions along the blade span and favorable unsteady aerodynamic phenomena on the blades. We have experimentally demonstrated the higher aerodynamic efficiency (thrust per unit aerodynamic power) of cycloidal rotors in comparison with conventional micro rotors used in multicopters and helicopters.

Additionally, a cycloidal rotor is capable of instantaneous thrust vectoring, which can potentially make the vehicle more maneuverable. The cyclorotor can perform efficient high-speed forward flight even beyond an advance ratio of 1.0 by a simple phasing of the cyclic blade-pitch schedule. Unlike a traditional hybrid aircraft (e.g., a tilt-rotor), a cyclocopter can transition from hover to high-speed forward flight without any configuration change due to its thrust vectoring capability. Finally, a cyclorotor can efficiently utilize the available 3-D space, and therefore, requires smaller footprint as compared to a conventional rotor, resulting in a highly compact flying vehicle.

What are some of the challenges in building a cyclocopter this small, and how did you solve them?

Designing and building a rotor at those scales was extremely challenging. We had to come up with innovative carbon composite fabrication techniques to make the rotor blades (0.12 grams each) and pitch links (10 milligrams) and they needed to have sub-millimeter accuracy. We had to custom build a 1.3-gram autopilot (called ELKA, designed by Dr. Vikram Hrishikeshavan at University of Maryland) with triaxial gyros, triaxial accelerometers, a processor, and wireless communications. System integration was challenging. When you scale things down, the dynamics becomes faster, so we had to spend many months trimming and tuning the feedback gains for hover stability. Developing and flight testing the 29-gram cyclocopter took more than 2 years, and was sponsored by the Army Research Laboratory’s MAST-CTA Program.

Image: Moble Benedict/Texas A&M

Conceptual drawing of a future palm-sized cyclocopter.

What are you working on next?

I think that the key areas that still need to be improved are:

1. Designing ultralight blades that can handle the large centrifugal bending loads at high RPMs
2. Reducing the weight and complexity of the cyclorotors significantly
3. Optimization of blade kinematics, blade aerodynamic design, rotor geometry, etc to maximize efficiency in both hover and high-speed flight
4. Mechanically simpler means of implementing these optimal pitching mechanisms either passively or actively
5. Investigating more compact cyclocopter configuration and understanding the upward scalability of this concept

We have shown that this concept has the potential at smaller micro air vehicle scales. The next big step in our research is to investigate the upward scalability of a cycloidal rotor to be used on large VTOL UAVs weighing 100s of pounds and maybe even on a manned aircraft. We have a five-year grant from the U.S. Army to investigate the upward scalability of this concept.

More than anything I want more people around the world to be aware of such a concept so that we can encourage them to work on this. One or two groups working on this idea can only make so much progress. I hope that in the future, once this technology is more mature, it will find its place in the next generation of personal air vehicles and flying cars.

By John Boyd

This article is obtained from here.

A consortium of 15 Japanese automakers and manufacturers that make components and systems for cars—including Toyota, Honda and Nissan, as well as Mitsubishi Electric, map makers, and others—have come together to create detailed, high-definition 3D maps to help usher in safe autonomous driving. Japan’s government is backing the project as part of its effort to have driverless vehicles on the road in time for the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. The 2020 target date has had the effect of focusing the country’s robocar efforts to prevent Japan from falling behind similar efforts underway in the United States and Europe.

Mitsubishi Electric is leading the project—dubbed Dynamic Map Planning—and is providing a new, compact version of its vehicle-mounted mobile mapping system. Mitsubishi began marketing a version of the system, the MMS-G220, overseas in October, and will introduce the commercial version domestically sometime in 2017. The tedious task of mapping Japan’s 30,000 kilometers of expressways—the plan’s first priority—is now underway.

The mobile mapping system (MMS) can be configured to take advantage of various combinations of lidar, cameras, and other sensors, along with a GPS antenna, depending on the application. The devices are assembled to form a single detachable unit designed for easy maintenance. The system, which can be mounted on even a compact car’s roof, draws power from the car’s cigarette lighter socket.

As the vehicle cruises at speeds of around 40 km an hour, the system uses a laser-scanning point cloud technique to gather 3D positioning data of roadside features such as traffic signals, road signage, and lane markings. It can capture objects up to 7 meters away with an absolute accuracy of 10 centimeters, according to Mitsubishi.

A point cloud is a collection of data points formed in space, the position of each point being identified by its X, Y, and Z coordinates. When light emitted by a laser scanner is reflected back from an object or surface, that information is recorded as a data point. Point cloud data alone would not be sufficient to identify objects clearly, so in post-processing, it is superimposed on synchronized camera images taken at the same time. This information-rich combination is then processed to create 3D maps. Color can also be added at this time.

With standard laser equipment, the Mitsubishi system collects 27,100 data points a second. With optional high-performance laser scanners, that number is raised to one million points a second. The mapping system can be equipped with long-range, high-density laser scanners that provide detailed images of cityscapes or roadside buildings.

To keep track of where these objects are in space, the system relies on GPS, an inertial measurement unit, and a wheel-mounted odometer to help calculate the position of the vehicle. For even greater accuracy, the mobile mapping system will also make use of the nascent Quasi-Zenith Satellite System, a Japan-centered commercial satellite system that aims to provide centimeter-scale positioning to augment the U.S.-operated GPS service. This is due to go into full operation in 2018.

Shun Kuriaki, manager of Mitsubishi Electric’s IT Solution Department, in its Electronic Systems Group, says that to improve the safety of autonomous driving, more detailed information than is currently supplied by car navigation systems is required. In bad weather, for instance, the effectiveness of various sensors needed to maintain control of the driving task can be diminished to the point where they’re inoperable.

“The MMS 3D maps will provide such additional information as noise barriers, lane divisions and their widths and surface conditions, as well as the location of traffic lights, road signs and other useful information to help improve the safety of autonomous driving,” says Kuriaki,

The system, which is gathering the myriad bits of information needed to subsequently allow vehicles to traverse Japan’s roads without human intervention, is designed to be operated by a person with a notebook PC in the passenger seat. According to Mitsubishi, no specialist knowledge is required to operate the system or to run the post-processing software after the data is collected.

Autonomous driving is just one of several applications for which Mitsubishi is seeking to use its MMS system. “Some special specification versions of our MMS have already been applied to inspection of tunnel linings and road surface conditions,” says Kuriaki. “And we are also studying how to apply the technology to other fields, such as inspection of railway tracks and underground areas.”

With Mitsubishi ready to export its road-scanning technology, it can expect to compete with Google in the United States, and with several companies in Europe.