Much has been written about Alternative Power sources and the promise of a less oil dependent world. Great attention both politically and environmentally is paid by the media and society in general. Despite the hype some scientific facts exist. When you combine fuel with oxygen you can chemically generate electricity without combustion. You do have power tough which ultimately is the end game. One group that is leveraging the concept of allowing their fuel cells to run off of available fuels such as coal, JP-8, and diesel is CellTech Power:
The advantage of this approach is profound for military applications and commercial ones where devices need to run on portable power devices. A feature of this approach is being flexible as emissions regulations evolve and technology scales to those metrics. Their website listed above provides a great tutorial on fuel cells in general. It’s one of the best I’ve seen.
Another group that is coming at the fuel cell game a little differently is Lynntech. They are creating electrochemical power supplies and hydrogen generation modules for a variety of platforms including UAV’s, and medical devices. See a description of their work at: http://www.lynntech.com/company.htm
Embedded Computing Provides Foundation & Path to Deployment
In order to deploy the types of systems that would revolve around fuel cell power in any form embedded computing resources would be a must. Whether they control the medical, military or industrial device or platform taking advantage of the alterative power scheme the advantages and need for energy management and harvesting will be manifested by various types of embedded computing schemes. These forms could be data acquisition ,graphics,dense processing or even cloud based. Certainly in many cases very rugged packaging of the computer platform would be an asset. One such group with a very versatile product line that lends itself nicely to alternative power applications is Arbor Embedded Computing. See their portfolio at: http://www.arbor.com.tw/as/product.aspx
In order to manage these fuel cell applications within their designated platforms visual user interfaces will need to be created. This is especially true for any vehicle related “dashboard” . The aircraft industry with their “glass cockpit” smart display approach as taken great advantage of graphics and animation. These schemes are now moving into ground based vehicles both military and commercial. As they manifest themselves a greater and greater dependency on graphics and video will naturally occur. Think about the timeline from the car radio to the eight track to the DVD to now social media via cell phones and smart devices plugged into the vehicle. The acceleration with each breakthrough has been profound. One group that brings a force multiplier to this vetronics space, http://proceedings.ndia.org/3570/session6/Vetronics by virtue of past experience in cockpit and ground vehicle support applications is, Animated Media Inc. through their versatile VGK package http://www.animatedmedia.ca/products/vgk-platform offers platform systems integrators on the commercial side to develop an ecosystem for revenue generation and on the military vehicle side a way to enhance situational awareness through the combination of sensor inputs in real time with stored data enhanced with social media aspects that leverage the www. This link touches on some of these issues.
http://www.militaryaerospace.com/index/display/article-display/0866344659/articles/military-aerospace-electronics/volume-22/issue-9/special-report/high-value-ventronics-robotics.html?cmpid=EnlMAEOctober52011
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