Smart fartpacks

Cow farts may not be as obnoxious as the human version, but are infamous for contributing to global warming. Methane, the key gas in cow fart, is believed to contribute 18 per cent of the world's global warming. But a group of smart technologists at Argentina's National Institute for Agricultural Technology have devised a way to convert the harmful methane emissions to 'green' energy. They invented a special backpack for cows that can trap methane, which can be used as fuel. A cow weighing 550kg can produce 800 to 1,000 litres of methane emissions that can actually generate sufficient power for running a refrigerator or a car for an entire day. The backpacks are strapped to cows and connected by a tube, one side of which goes inside the digestive tract of this mammal and the other to the backpack. A gem of an idea to harness the power of a cow's flatulence and also save the environment.

Pipe vigil

A team of engineers at University of Petroleum and Energy Studies at Dehradun innovated a unique unmanned aerial vehicle to keep a constant vigil on India's oil pipelines that deliver crude oil from reservoirs to refineries. The autonomous powered parachute aerial vehicle will follow a planned trajectory for monitoring the pipelines that face the threat of terrorist attacks, theft, leaks and other damages which may go unnoticed for days to weeks. The team, led by aerospace engineer Vindhya Devalla, plans to incorporate remote sensing devices, such as infrared camera, in the vehicle with video transmission to the groundstation for continuous monitoring. The guidance logic was developed using a specific navigation technique, where the controller gets the latitude, longitude and altitude values from the geographical positioning system.

Pic : Onkarnath Bhattacharya