backtop

Print 32 comment(s) - last by Fritzr.. on Mar 12 at 5:15 PM

OLEV at Korean Amusement Park  (Source: PhysOrg)
Charge strips are placed under blue line the tram follows

Anyone who has ever traveled to a major amusement park knows the dread that is felt when facing a long hike to the gates from the parking lot. Amusement park goers can also appreciate the trams that typically run along the parking lot roadways which take visitors to and from the gates.

Most of these amusement park trams are powered by standard combustion engines or perhaps natural gas. A major amusement park in South Korea has debuted its new tram system that is electric and uses a "recharging road" to stay juiced. The tram is designed to look like a train engine and pulls three carriages to take passengers to and from the park gates. The tram system is called the Online Electric Vehicle or OLEV.

A blue line that runs up the road is positioned along the route the tram rides and has power strips under the surface of the road that are able to deliver power to the trams electrical system as it drives over the blue line. According to the researchers behind the prototype OLEV, if the amusement park trial proves to be successful, there are plans to try the recharging road system on a bus route in the South Korean capital of Seoul.

The total length of the prototype route at the park is 400 meters. Under the OLEV tram is a system that allows the pickup of electricity from the strip under the road surface and then distributes the power picked up to either the vehicle for propulsion or the battery for storage. PhysOrg reports that if the system is trialed in Seoul, the power strip recharge stations will only be placed on 20% of the bus route at places where the bus sits for extended periods like bus stops, parking lots, and intersections.

The OLEV system was designed by the state-funded Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and the research team has applied for over 120 patents relating to the system. 

KAIST president Suh Nam-Pyo said, "Of all the world's electric vehicles, this is the most economical system." Suh claims that the system developed at KAIST costs about a third as much as other electric vehicles to operate. Suh also said, "The potential for application (of this technology to public transport systems) is limitless. I dare say this is one of the most significant technical gains in the 21st century."

Among the breakthroughs that were made to make the system possible was a way to transmit power to the pickup device on the vehicle chassis using magnetic methods. The team claims that the system it developed can transmit power from the underground strips to the vehicle across gaps of up to 25cm. At the amusement park, the prototype system uses a gap of 11 centimeters to account for bumps in the road.

The AFP reports that technology for the system was first developed in association with the University of California Berkeley, but the developed tech ultimately failed to produce tangible results. KAIST also plans to use the charge strip system to move attendees and delegates of the G20 summit from one place to another in November.

Comments     Threshold


This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled
A bit of hyperbole?
By porkpie on 3/10/2010 12:25:42 PM , Rating: 5
quote:
I dare say this is one of the most significant technical gains in the 21st century."
One of the 21st Century's most significant inventions...to do what we first did in 1888 with electric trolley cars?

I don't mean to minimize the potential usefulness of this...street-based recharging could indeed make electric cars much more practical. But a proper sense of historical perspective is, I think very useful here.




RE: A bit of hyperbole?
By artemicion on 3/10/2010 12:40:12 PM , Rating: 2
If you're going to use specious reasoning to conclude that the tech described in the article is the same as the tech used to power trolley cars, you might as well go further down the line and assert that it's essentially the same as the horse and carriage. We've been transporting things for centuries! Or hey, the thing also operates on wheels. We've been rolling things on wheels for millenia! Also, it's made of . . . stuff. We've making making stuff out of stuff since stuff was first discovered by cavemen!

A "significant" invention isn't defined by doing something that hadn't been done before. Sliced bread is neither the first instance of bread nor things that are sliced.


RE: A bit of hyperbole?
By Pneumothorax on 3/10/2010 12:45:43 PM , Rating: 2
It really isn't revolutionary, rather evolutionary as this seems just a further refinement of Induction that's been around for awhile. Ever have an electric rechargeable toothbrush? Majority of those are charged by induction.


RE: A bit of hyperbole?
By dragonbif on 3/10/2010 1:05:26 PM , Rating: 2
It is true about the toothbrush but it takes forever to charge. This thing would need to push a lot more power for it to work. Also have you seen the other cities with electric busses and trolleys? Ugly is all I have to say about that, all those wires and rails all over the place eww. This just has a blue line painted on the road and they could make it any color they wanted, pink they could make it pink!
It is true that induction has been here and there but not like this and not in a way that could be used by all cars on the road. You are thinking to small with what they are looking at, I see a lot more that could be done with it. You could make floating cars with it too!


RE: A bit of hyperbole?
By Drag0nFire on 3/10/2010 1:26:06 PM , Rating: 2
Makes me wonder a bit about the efficiency. How can all the power being wasted through inefficiencies of induction based charging be more economical than wires?


RE: A bit of hyperbole?
By VeauX on 3/10/2010 2:46:30 PM , Rating: 2
Well, that's old technology. A lot of cities in france have electric trams that are all but ugly, no wire, hidden rails, pretty neat in fact.

Take a look there:
http://images.google.com/images?hl=es&client=firef...


RE: A bit of hyperbole?
By dragonbif on 3/10/2010 3:19:42 PM , Rating: 2
Now that looks nice ;)


RE: A bit of hyperbole?
By afkrotch on 3/10/2010 7:59:07 PM , Rating: 2
I still see rails.


RE: A bit of hyperbole?
By MadMan007 on 3/11/2010 5:52:54 AM , Rating: 2
You should feel right at home while riding one and using your Win XP laptop.


RE: A bit of hyperbole?
By porkpie on 3/10/2010 12:49:14 PM , Rating: 2
"Sliced bread is neither the first instance of bread nor things that are sliced."

If you've already invented both bread and slicing, you don't give the first person to slice bread a medal as inventor of the century, either.

The similarities between this and a 19th-century trolley are far more than both simply "carriages with wheels'. They're both electric vehicles, powered by a grid distributing that electricity along the route of the vehicle.

This has a battery, to allow it to not be required to be powered continuously...but so did some of the early trolleys (though admittedly their non-powered range was much smaller). This also is powered from below..more like an early electric subway system, than the outdoor trolleys, powered from above. Again, nothing earthshaking here.

What IS new about this invention? At a glance, I imagine they have some pretty nifty means to safely boost voltage so you don't get eaten alive on line losses, plus some advances in safely and efficiently distributing it from the buried pad to the cars themselves.

A useful step forward? Yes. Invention of the century? Not quite.


RE: A bit of hyperbole?
By artemicion on 3/10/2010 1:23:53 PM , Rating: 3
well apparently "sliced bread" was significant enough to coin the phrase, "the best thing since sliced bread" so i assume that at some point in time people that it was significant and awesome. i also assume that people had bread and sliced things before said point in time.


RE: A bit of hyperbole?
By Fritzr on 3/12/2010 5:15:20 PM , Rating: 2
The innovation was a slicer that did the entire loaf in one pass. Until that invention, bread was sliced one slice at a time. Usually at home, on the kitchen counter, with a knife that did it badly...

You can get a taste of the good old days. Just buy a bread knife and unsliced loaves. Enjoy :D

The innovation here is isolated inductive charging pads, that according to this article offer a higher efficiency than other trams offering hidden power supplies or batteries that hold enough power for hours of operation.

The most efficient full electrics still remains the ones that are always plugged in (overhead conductor, third rail etc.) This does away with overhead power or dangerous exposed powerlines underfoot. As a bonus if a street is closed, tram service is not cancelled.


RE: A bit of hyperbole?
By Adonlude on 3/10/2010 2:47:27 PM , Rating: 2
This is basically a cell phone recharging mat meets trolly. Still pretty cool. Think they will make a trolly recharging mat?


RE: A bit of hyperbole?
By whiskerwill on 3/10/2010 1:07:31 PM , Rating: 3
quote:
A "significant" invention isn't defined by doing something that hadn't been done before.
You might want to look up the meaning of the word 'invent':

"to produce (as something useful) for the first time ..."

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inventin...


RE: A bit of hyperbole?
By artemicion on 3/10/2010 1:22:05 PM , Rating: 2
i should clarify, i meant the invention doesn't necessarily have to accomplish some *end* that hadn't been done before. like the printing press. the end accomplished by the printing press is writing. the printing press isn't the first thing to accomplish writing, it just made writing more efficient. that doesn't mean it wasn't a significant invention. I was merely contradicting the OP's contention that the invention described in the article isn't significant because it did something that had already been done before-i.e. charging transportation vehicles on a line.


RE: A bit of hyperbole?
By erple2 on 3/10/2010 2:14:35 PM , Rating: 2
I'd argue that the printing press didn't make writing any easier. On the contrary, it's much more time consuming to set up a printing press to print a page of paper than to actually hand write it.

What the Printing Press DID do, however, was revolutionize the ability to make tens, hundreds or thousands of copies of the same document. That in and of itself while interesting wasn't all that significant, until you realize that you can now distribute all those copies to lots of different people very quickly, and at the same time.


RE: A bit of hyperbole?
By Murloc on 3/10/2010 1:59:28 PM , Rating: 2
you're right that there is too much hyperbole, it's not a complete new technology. It's a nice thing.

It would allow buses to carry smaller battery packs and not have to wait too long to recharge at the bus parking lot.


RE: A bit of hyperbole?
By blueeyesm on 3/11/2010 12:01:47 PM , Rating: 2
They could also set up each wheel to generate electricity via motors, to maintain a charge to said batteries. This would help reduce the need for charged strips in the ground.


RE: A bit of hyperbole?
By Reinman on 3/10/2010 3:51:59 PM , Rating: 1
These tells u how far behind America in terms of transporation. We do't even have a bullet train like other countries do. We are more focused on weapon advancement. When are we going to see this happen in our own country.


RE: A bit of hyperbole?
By Darkskypoet on 3/10/2010 8:44:34 PM , Rating: 2
Well see, if you learned anything from Stewie then you'd know that with the weapons we can take the other inventions... Ahh yes, trading the ball for the baseball bat and ending up with both :)


RE: A bit of hyperbole?
By d3872 on 3/11/2010 12:19:36 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
These tells u how far behind America in terms of transporation. We do't even have a bullet train like other countries do. We are more focused on weapon advancement. When are we going to see this happen in our own country.


Tell me about it! You'd think we'd be able to develop something like that. It's all part of a conspiracy to suppress public transport. It has nothing to do with the US having a very low population density or any other psuedo-scientific mumbo jumbo. It's a conspiracy!

It's like in Saudi Arabia- there's a vast conspiracy among the big oil families to prevent the development of Saudi Arabia's hydro-electric program. It's the only logical explanation.


Research that failed to produce results?
By bravenewworld on 3/10/2010 1:42:53 PM , Rating: 3
"The technology was first developed in a project involving the University of California (Berkeley) but KAIST said that produced no tangible results."

This sounds eerily similar to what many researchers do to prevent them from having to lose the ability to patent something themselves.
They get the state, or fed grants to subsidize them, then mysteriously hit a roadblock and claim the idea won't work. Then open a company immediately afterward, and patent the same thing, (with minor alterations to avoid litigation) they were just researching on the gov's dime! They sometimes already have a working prototype ready to go in 'record' time.

In this case, it may have been Korea using our gov funded schools and transportation system to do the majority of the research, then claim it won't work. Their researchers go back to Korea and miraculously figure out the problem!

This is most rampant with Chinese researcher scientists studying in the US.
At least this tech is for something most Americans don't ever use, public transportation.




By MadMan007 on 3/11/2010 5:56:35 AM , Rating: 2
I was wondering about this as well...


By camylarde on 3/11/2010 7:11:15 AM , Rating: 2
Public transportation... you mean my car, my sis's car, my dad's car and my moms car altogether with my neighbours 6 cars, right? We use them everyday!


saadf
By smithonian on 3/11/2010 12:23:03 AM , Rating: 5
asfasdfasd




RE: saadf
By smithonian on 3/11/2010 12:26:35 AM , Rating: 1
I want to delete above comment that I wrote.
But I don't know how.


If used for bus lanes...
By rikulus on 3/10/2010 1:42:40 PM , Rating: 2
How long until somebody rigs up an electric car that borrows some power from road for free?




RE: If used for bus lanes...
By TheEinstein on 3/10/2010 2:40:56 PM , Rating: 2
I was thinking of a cable you could toss out over the 'blue line' and power your home between buses... who cares about the car!!! Reduce the real power bill and you will love life!


Tried to Do This Years Ago
By Scientist87 on 3/10/2010 3:29:44 PM , Rating: 2
Figures...
I designed a system like this 9 years ago and submitted a request to the DOE to build a prototype. If you use resonant inductive coupling over distances less than 15 cm, you can get effeciences in the neighborhood of 90%. Covering a few of the most traveled routes in the US can save 1 million gal of gas per 5 km per year. Retrofitting hybrid cars with power receiver would be trivial. Standard cars would cost about $1200 each.
Yes, we still would need much more electric capacity and that is not trivial.
For a total infrastructure cost of about $400 billion (+ 12 billion a year in maintainence), we could completely eliminate our dependence on foreign oil. A crapload of money, I know. But what did the Middle East wars cost us?




RE: Tried to Do This Years Ago
By porkpie on 3/10/2010 4:14:36 PM , Rating: 2
"If you use resonant inductive coupling over distances less than 15 cm, you can get effeciences in the neighborhood of 90%"

You have to add line losses on top of that. Offhand, I can't imagine you can run a buried cable like this at more than 600-1000v, meaning your losses are going to much higher per mile than normal transmission lines.

"Retrofitting hybrid cars with power receiver would be trivial."

You'd also need a means to account for and charge the drivers of those vehicles...unless you want the government paying for them to drive.

"For a total infrastructure cost of about $400 billion, we could completely eliminate our dependence on foreign oil."

We use oil for far more than road transportation. Power generation, diesel farm vehicles, jet fuel, etc, as well as everything from plastics to road tar to certain medicines and lubricants.

Your cost figure works out to about $100K/mile, to retrofit existing roads, install the cable and all the inductors needed. That might be plausible, but I'd like to see the assumptions that figure was based on...it seems to be about a quarter of what I'd estimate the actual cost to be.

In any case, your maintenance figure is certainly far too low, even if your capital cost is correct. It works out to a 33+ year lifespan for all cabling and parts, with no other maintenance, failures, or incidental charges. It also ignores the cost of the electricity itself -- the largest factor in the equation.

Finally, you have the cost of the receivers on the cars themselves. Assuming your cost figure is correct, that's $250B in additional costs right there.


Repaving?
By ChrisHF on 3/10/2010 1:14:05 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
The team claims that the system it developed can transmit power from the underground strips to the vehicle across gaps of up to 25cm.


Does that mean you can only repave the road a few times before you have to do something more complex and expensive?




The more detailed information
By smithonian on 3/11/2010 12:47:59 AM , Rating: 2
The total length of road that the Korean OLEV must pass is 2.2km(1.4 miles)
Only the total 400 meters of 2.2km (about 20% of total length) need to be repaved.
The efficiency of electric power transmission by wireless is 74%.

Generally EV needs a very big sized battery to contain large electric charges so that EV can go long distance without additional charging.
But battery is the most expensive part in EV.
And the more big sized battery is, the more expensive.

The merit of newly developed Korean tram is that it needs only 1/5 sized battery compared to the previous battery in order to go to the same distance because Korean tram receives power by wireless during a drive.




"There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance." -- Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer









botimage
Copyright 2012 DailyTech LLC. - RSS Feed | Advertise | About Us | Ethics | FAQ | Terms, Conditions & Privacy Information | Kristopher Kubicki