Development of a Soft Robotics Module for Active Control of Sitting Comfort

Sitting comfort is an important factor for passengers in selecting cars, airlines, etc. This paper proposes a soft robotic module that can be integrated into the seat cushion to provide better comfort experiences to passengers. Building on rapid manufacturing technologies and a data-driven approach, the module can be controlled to sense the...

The Development of an Energy Efficient Electric Mitad for Baking Injeras in Ethiopia

Preparation of Injera, the cultural staple bread food<br/>item in Ethiopia, is known for its intensive energy consuming<br/>cooking. Baking this food item in the traditional three stone stoves,<br/>with an efficiency of 5-15%, consumes huge amounts of firewood<br/>and causes consequent problems like deforestation, global warming<br/>and...

Comparison of the indoor performance of 12 commercial PV products by a simple model

This article presents a simple comparative model which has been developed for the estimation of the performance of photovoltaic (PV) products' cells in indoor environments. The model predicts the performance of PV solar cells, as a function of the distance from a spectrum of artificial (fluorescent light, halogen light, and light-emitting diodes...

Comparison of the indoor performance of 12 commercial PV products by a simple model

This article presents a simple comparative model which has been developed for the estimation of the performance of photovoltaic (PV) products' cells in indoor environments. The model predicts the performance of PV solar cells, as a function of the distance from a spectrum of artificial (fluorescent light, halogen light, and light-emitting diodes...

Multidimensional sustainability assessment of solar products: Educating engineers and designers

Since 2008 the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering at the TU Delft hosts the minor Sustainable Design Engineering. The minor has been highly useful as a platform to pilot new ways of teaching engineering for sustainable development. Instead of having students make life cycle assessments and introduce them to straightforward checklists to...

The use of battery-capacitor combinations in photovoltaic powered products

This paper analyzes smart combinations of rechargeable batteries and capacitors in energy storage media of photovoltaic (PV) powered products. Important in a mature design of such products is an efficient energy transfer from PV converter into the storage media and from storage towards the energy consuming application. In this paper, an...