Drones, driverless vehicles, 3-D printing, wearable technology and robotics that will have the largest impact on the supply chain over the next five years is the subject of a study carried out by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville's Global Supply Chain Institute.  Of the technologies, studied  robotics will be byfar the greatest potential disrupter over the next five years.

"Robotics have been around for more than 50 years, but they have become dramatically more dynamic in the last five," said Paul Dittmann, executive director of the Global Supply Chain Institute. "They are no longer stationary, blind, expensive and unintelligent but can work alongside people and learn as jobs change." 

The Lang Technik Robotic Systems who are represented in New Zealand by WorthyCAM are a good example of the advances made in automated systems that now make short runs very competitive.  And as far as Drones are concerned only have to turn to the TV News to see how footage taken by a Drone enhances the viewing experience.

|  A Materials Handling & Logistics release  ||  May 16, 2017   |||

Here we go! We are about to open a 10 day launch attempt window from May 22, 2017, for the first launch attempt of our Electron rocket.

The launch, titled ‘It’s a Test’, will take place from our private orbital launch site, Launch Complex 1, on the Māhia Peninsula, New Zealand.

This is a significant milestone for Rocket Lab and the space industry globally. We are about to enter the next phase of the Electron program, which will see the culmination of years of work from our dedicated team here at Rocket Lab.

'It's a Test' is all about gathering data. There are over 20,000 channels collected during the flight. We will use this information to learn and iterate.

As with any new rocket, there are a lot of factors that come together ahead of a test and we’re not going to fly unless we’re ready. It's highly possible we will scrub multiple attempts as we fine tune and wait for favorable weather conditions.

We’re committed to making space accessible. Thanks for your interest and support - it means a lot to us.

Stay tuned!

Cheers,Pete

|  A RocketLab release  ||  May 15, 2017   |||

Much of the buzz around potential Hyperloop systems of late has centered on how they might first make tracks in countries outside the US, but for its latest announcement, startup Hyperloop One is looking much closer to home. The LA-based company has today outlined 11 potential routes for Hyperloop routes in the US that it says would massively reduce transport and cargo time through the nation's more heavily used passages.

Hyperloop One is just one of the transport companies vying make the futuristic transport system a reality. First described in an Elon Musk white paper in 2013, the Hyperloop would shuttle passengers and cargo through low-vacuum tubes at close to the speed of sound, a velocity made possible by the minimal aerodynamic drag inside.

Hyperloop One has agreements to explore the feasibility of such a system with Russia, Finland and Dubai, among others, but this week it is turning its attention to US soil. Presenting at the Vision for America Conference today, the company has outlined a set of potential routes for a US Hyperloop system that would link more than 35 states.

Such a network of high-speed transport tubes is a ways off yet, however. The 11 proposals are finalists in the Hyperloop One Global Challenge which kicked off last May and drew more than 2,600 participants. The 11 will be whittled down to three teams, who will then work with Hyperloop One's engineers to explore further development.

The proposals under consideration include a 121-mile (194 km) route from San Diego to LA, a 257-mile (413 km) route connecting Miami and Orlando, a 640-mi (1,029) "Texas Triangle" and a monster 1,152 mi (1,853 km) route between Cheyenne and Houston that would run through four states. This final example would cut a 17-hour car trip to a one-hour and 45 minute journey.

Hyperloop One also revealed that it has added the finishing touches to its 500-meter long test track (0.3 mi) in Nevada, which will function as a testbed for its propulsion, vacuum, levitation and control technologies.

|  A  Hyperloop One release  ||  April 07, 2017   |||

The government’s business innovation agency has launched the 2017 C-Prize, offering challenge prizes to develop great ideas in wearable technology.

Callaghan Innovation CE Vic Crone says the C-Prize incentives, which include a $100,000 grand prize package will stimulate some great ideas, and the very best will become viable businesses.

“We know it takes a lot of courage to make the leap into innovation, and an opportunity like C-Prize can be just the nudge that people with ideas and ambition need to create a tangible concept.”

C-Prize 2017 calls for innovation in three important areas for New Zealand: living healthier, working safer and playing smarter.

Entrants need to create a hardware-software wearable solution that captures and processes user data and communicates feedback allowing the user to act to enhance their outcome.

Entries close July 2, 2017.

VX Sport CEO, Richard Snow, who will be one of the C-Prize 2017 judges, says wearable technology offers an exciting and virtually limitless opportunity for innovators.

“It can not only enhance personal communications for people within their environment, but also to create sensors and analysis that will improve health, wellness and efficiency in our daily lives.”

The first C-Prize, held two years ago, created a huge buzz around drone-tech, and launched the successful Dotterel venture, which has won awards and attracted investment for its noise-reduction technology was showcased as a C-Prize finalist in 2015.

The competition is open to anyone aged 16 and over, living in New Zealand. Entries are open until midnight, July 2, 2017 at www.cprize.nz.

|  A CallaghanInnovation release  ||   April 05, 2017   |||

It was the era of black and white television, The Beatles, and the space race between the US and Russia to the moon. It was the 1960s and on the other side of the world, in his garage in little New Zealand, a man was making crystals to generate radio frequency. That man was Warren Robinson, founder of Rakon. Back then, Warren saw a large gap in the market for crystals and so he decided to make his own. The company became incorporated on 4 April 1967.

Fast track fifty years where connected technology is in use more than ever, and diverse applications are evolving rapidly. The company continues to design and make frequency control devices based around quartz. However, today, there is a plethora of communication and location systems which all require accurate clocking signals to generate precise electrical, radio or optical signals in networks and systems everywhere – and at the heart of many, is a Rakon product. This week the company is celebrating across its multiple sites worldwide.

Rakon CEO Brent Robinson says the competitive nature of the industry and rapid pace of technology requirements makes the milestone particularly significant.

“It is an incredible achievement to not only endure within a highly dynamic technology driven industry such as ours, but to continuously innovate and push technology boundaries, and we are immensely proud of this milestone.”

So has being a kiwi-led company played a part in Rakon succeeding?

“Certainly the can-do attitude and transparency we have had with our customers has forged very strong relationships with them and that is something inherent within the New Zealand culture. Also our relative isolation to the rest of the world provided the opportunity, particularly in the early GPS days, to develop in-house our own proprietary test equipment completely unique to what else was available, which gave us an advantage.

“However, largely we have achieved this milestone through the sheer drive and determination of our highly talented team of engineers and professionals worldwide. We have built a truly global manufacturing, R&D and customer/application support platform. Supporting that is a great team who are united with the same passion and curiosity to continually go beyond conventional performance limits.”

Diversification has also been strongly part of the company’s strategy and Robinson says continuing to diversify, evolve and shape the business to customer requirements will be essential to succeed in the years ahead.

In 2015 the company diversified through its investment with Thinxtra – an Internet of Things (IoT) business. In February this year, Taiwanese company Siward Crystal Technology Company Limited took a 16.6 percent share in the company, giving both companies a broader range of products and alternative channels, into new and existing markets.

“Listening to our key eco-system partners, staying abreast of developments and evolving the business accordingly to meet their requirements − and those of the industry − is mandatory” Robinson said.

Rakon has a proud history of delivering industry ‘firsts’, has won a number of industry and supplier awards and its products can be found in many international programmes.

|  A Rakon release  ||  April 05, 2017   |||

Water may cover the majority of the planet's surface, but thanks to a huge helping of salt, it's hard to tap into as a source of drinking water. Once again, graphene could come to the rescue. Researchers at the University of Manchester have developed a graphene-oxide membrane with a scalable, uniform pore size that can filter out even the smallest salts, without affecting the flow of water too much.

Desalination plants already use a variety of techniques to produce safe drinking water, including shocking the salt and water into separating, using salt-attracting membranes, or harnessing the power of ocean waves to purify water and pump it back to shore. Graphene has already lent a hand before, too, acting like a big sponge that sits on the water's surface, drawing water up through it and cleaning it in the process.

The wonder material has also been put to work as a water filtering membrane that performed well at removing some particles, organic molecules and salts, but according to the Manchester researchers, it couldn't catch the smallest common salt ions. That's thanks to the fact that these membranes tend to swell up when submerged in water, which messes with the spacing between the graphene-oxide layers and lets the salt molecules slip through with the water.

The Manchester researchers claim they've found a way to limit how much the membranes swell in water, by physically confining the material. That allows them to precisely tune the size of the pores, and keep out the unwanted salts, particles and molecules by simply making them smaller than the diameter of the common salt ions. The team reports that 97 percent of sodium chloride ions are rejected by the membrane, while still allowing water to flow through fairly freely.

Scalability is one of the big factors in how viable the method is, and the researchers believe that their graphene-oxide membrane could comfortably scale both up and down. Upwards, and the method could help improve the efficiency of desalination plants. Scaling down, the filters themselves could be used as inexpensive water purifiers for developing countries with limited access to clean water or large-scale desalination plants.

"Realization of scalable membranes with uniform pore size down to atomic scale is a significant step forward and will open new possibilities for improving the efficiency of desalination technology," says Professor Rahul Nair, co-author of the study. "This is the first clear-cut experiment in this regime. We also demonstrate that there are realistic possibilities to scale up the described approach and mass produce graphene-based membranes with required sieve sizes."

Longer term, the team points out that the basic idea of tuning the pore sizes to filter out specific ions could be applied to different membranes, for different purposes.

"The developed membranes are not only useful for desalination, but the atomic scale tunability of the pore size also opens new opportunity to fabricate membranes with on-demand filtration capable of filtering out ions according to their sizes," says Jijo Abraham, co-lead author of the study.

|  The research was published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. \  April 5, 2017   |||

In a bid to get around terrestrial height restrictions, Clouds Architecture Office has proposed suspending the world's tallest skyscraper from an asteroid, leaving residents to parachute to earth.

New York-based Clouds Architecture Office drew up plans for Analemma Tower to "overturn the established skyscraper typology" by building not up from the ground but down from the sky by affixing the foundations to an orbiting asteroid.

"Harnessing the power of planetary design thinking, it taps into the desire for extreme height, seclusion and constant mobility," said the architects, who have previously drawn up proposals for space transportation and a 3D-printed ice house on Mars.

"If the recent boom in residential towers proves that sales price per square foot rises with floor elevation, then Analemma Tower will command record prices, justifying its high cost of construction."

Continue here on de zeen to read the full article with images |  March 30, 2017   |||

Huawei, the Chinese technology giant, has announced a new investment plan to extend its cloud computing infrastructure, research and development (R&D) partnership and local procurement in New Zealand.

Huawei will work with local partners to build a New Zealand Cloud Data Centre, and will open an innovation lab this year, the company said without disclosing the value of the deal.

The lab, located at Victoria University of Wellington, will concentrate on the deployment of big data and Internet of Things (IoT) themed future technology including 5G.

Huawei will build another innovation lab in Christchurch to seek local R&D partnership there, and open a regional office in the country’s capital for local procurement and help businesses in New Zealand which will be integrated into Huawei’s global supply-chain network.

Huawei’s Founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei said it is seeking further investment opportunities in New Zealand due to its open and fair trade environment and emphasis on developing new technology.

The digital transformation empowered by advanced ICT technology will enable New Zealand’s traditional strengths, including tourism resources, agricultural and trade sectors, into new driving forces of economic growth, he said.

Over the next five years, Huawei will also fund a total of 100 New Zealand undergraduate students to travel to China and learn about latest technology and participate in cultural exchanges.

||  A Huawai release,  |   March 22, 2017   |||

Today, we announced that Rocket Lab has closed a $75m Series D financing round, led by Data Collective, with additional investors Promus Ventures and an undisclosed investor.

We’ve partnered with this esteemed group of investors because of their experience in the space industry. We also had renewed participation in this round from our existing investors - Khosla Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners and K1W1 - who have provided continued expertise and support as we work to make space accessible to everyone. The closure of the round brings the total funding Rocket Lab has received to date to $148 million, with the company value now in excess of $1 billion (USD).

Currently, small satellite companies wait years to get on orbit, often at the mercy and schedules of larger payloads. With Electron, they will be provided a high-frequency, quality launch service that will take customers where they want to go, when they want to fly. The commercial and humanitarian applications this will open up are endless. The satellites Electron will launch are used to provide optimized crop monitoring, natural disaster prediction, Internet from space, improved weather reporting, up-to-date maritime data and search and rescue services.

Today, we also welcome Matt Ocko of Data Collective to Rocket Lab’s board. We’re delighted to work with Matt and his team, including Chris Boshuizen, who have extensive knowledge of this industry and will bring added expertise to our leadership.

You may have seen that just last month, the first Electron vehicle arrived to Launch Complex 1, our private launch facility on the Mahia Peninsula. As we speak the team is hard at work commissioning the site. In other words, they’re completing hundreds of tests to ensure that all systems are safe and ready for launch.

The test flight program will begin with our first Electron rocket, “It’s a Test,” where we’ll aim to get Rocket Lab’s own flying laboratory, complete with 20,000 data channels, into Low-Earth Orbit. The insight it will gather will prove invaluable as we seek to learn from the first flight and iterate on the vehicle so as to optimize its performance in advance of future launches. We fully expect to meet a few challenges along the way but this will only leave us better prepared as we enter the commercial phase of launch.

Our priorities are safety and security first and foremost. This may mean that as we enter different launches we may decide to “scrub” or delay a launch to ensure these priorities are met. There’s a lot of work to be done and we’re not going to fly unless we’re ready. We’ve got a big year ahead and the team are excited to work through the test phase of our program and begin manufacturing Electron at scale.

This brings me to our next exciting piece of news. We’re incredibly pleased to announce the opening of our new Huntington Beach, California office. While we’ve had a presence in the LA area since 2013, this new facility will enable us to triple our production rate. We’re actively hiring for our engineering and business units and we’re committed to rapidly growing and scaling in both our Huntington Beach HQ and Auckland, NZ office. If you're interested in open positions please take a look at our careers page.

Join us as we work to make space accessible and follow along here!

Cheers,Pete

|  A RocketLab release  |  March 22, 2017

Auckland – The Internet of Things (IoT) will soon become critical to helping New Zealand raise its productivity and prosperity, NZTech chief executive Graeme Muller says.

Much of the current hype around IoT has been derived from consumer IoT such as fitness trackers and intelligent fridges. The real value to be had from the Internet of Things is in enterprise and government applications.

A collaborative national research project is underway to better understand the potential benefits (and risks) of IoT for the New Zealand economy. The project, being managed by NZTech, brings together major tech users, tech firms, the government, academia and industry groups such as TUANZ and InternetNZ, all who have an interest in the potential impact of IoT for New Zealand.

IoT impact of how Kiwis work

Muller says IoT is becoming a growing topic of conversation both in the workplace and outside of it. It’s a concept that not only has the potential to impact how Kiwis live but also how they work.

Fast broadband is becoming more widely available, the cost of connecting is decreasing, more devices are being created with wi-fi capabilities and sensors built into them, technology costs are dropping, and smartphone penetration is sky-rocketing.

Research project important

Putting all these rapid developments into the mix is creating a perfect platform for IoT to take off, Muller says, this is why the research project and a better understanding of how to apply IoT are needed.

“While IoT is a rapidly developing technology, understanding of its potential is still relatively limited. By undertaking a collaborative research project with the government, the tech sector and tech users we have an opportunity to raise the profile of IoT and highlight its potential,” Muller says.

“The research will also help us understand opportunities that IoT could create for different sectors, and any barriers or challenges that may need to be addressed to accelerate deployment.

“IoT presents a massive opportunity for technology to drive New Zealand’s economic growth. Yet to accelerate deployment and uptake, a better understanding of the opportunities is needed.

“While the research won’t be completed until mid-year, some initial observations give us cause for optimism. While current uptake is very low, with only around 10 percent of New Zealand businesses having deployed or currently planning to deploying IoT type technologies, New Zealand has all the ingredients for a business environment that will support accelerated growth.

“Compared to the G20 nations, New Zealand scores well for IoT readiness due to ease of doing business, government stability, regulatory quality, a good innovation ecosystem and education system.”

Initial economic analysis has identified potential economic benefits in the hundreds of millions of dollars for the New Zealand economy through the deployment of IoT in sectors as diverse as agriculture, utilities, manufacturing, logistics and smart city services.

IoT examples

Some of the interesting uses of IoT in New Zealand that the research has identified include:

Connected Cow sheds: The faster milk is cooled the better quality it will be. Cooling milk uses about 30 percent of the total energy costs for running a dairy farm. IoT sensors and actuators can manage the temperatures at each stage of milk flow. Real time alerts are sent by text message or app notification if problems are identified. This enables the farmer to resolve the problem quickly to minimise milk loss.

Smart street lighting: Saves a city money in energy costs and reduces pollution by intelligently trimming and dimming individually addressed lights. Auckland Transport is installing around 40,000 smart LED streetlights which can individually respond to local light conditions saving millions.

Better health and safety: Wearables for employees can manage that employee’s site access levels, improve awareness and adherence to health and safety requirements, and enable better utilisation of staff in real time workforce management.

The research will be published in June this year. Global researcher IDC forecasts there will be 30.4 billion connected things worldwide by 2020.

| A Make Lemonade release  |  March 19, 2017  ||