Power generation using Wind turbine Kites

Benjamin Franklin is reputed to have attached a metal key to the bottom of a dampened kite string and flown the kite in a storm-threatened sky.A succession of sparks jumping from the key to the back of his hand showed that lightning was indeed electrical in nature.Never, he had imagined that same kite would be used to generate electricity on its own.

We all know about traditional windmills.Whenever, I saw windmills ,I know, there is lot of scope in designing improvement. But, before Makani Power , I had never imagined, that improvement would be of that sort which changes windmills altogether.With Makani Team's great imagination and innovation with funds from US Government and Google.Org, power can be generated using kites connected through wire from the base.

These types of wind turbines are known as Airborne Wind Turbines.An airborne wind turbine is a design concept for a wind turbine that is supported in the air without a tower.Airborne wind turbines may operate in low or high altitudes; they are part of a wider class of airborne wind energy systems (AWE) addressed by high-altitude wind power.

This project would be a great milestone for Aeronautical , Mechanical and Electrical engineering students and I would strongly recommend you to study more about what Makani Power is trying to achieve and about their concept.

The Makani team has achieved a significant milestone in the pursuit of inexpensive renewable energy during a recent flight of its latest prototype, Wing 7. Wing 7 has a wing span of 8 meters, weighs 58.4 kg and has a rated power of 20 kW.

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Related Projects

Robotics Projects
Mechanical Projects

Build your own Wind Turbine

A wind turbine is a device that converts kinetic energy from the wind into mechanical energy.This turbine can be used for many purposes such as producing electricity,grinding grain or pumping water.

In this project we are talking about how we can use it to produce electricity.

Instruction guide PDF :
Build your own wind turbine



Concept :

Electricity is generated by the movement of a loop of wire, or disc of copper between the poles of a magnet and this movement would be produced by our wind turbine.

Things to know :

Nearly every electric generator has a starter and a rotor. The rotor, a magnet, is placed inside the start and rotates there.If you want first build electric generator using method given here and then connect it with our wind turbine.

Wind Turbine based on Instruction guide above :



More info about the video

Pedal Powered Washing Machine

Pedal Powered Washing Machine

A washing machine is a machine designed to wash laundry, such as clothing, towels and sheets.Generally these machines has been powered by electrical energy but pedal powered machine runs with our energy.

Pedal powered washing machines can be very useful for rural places in developing countries where electricity is out of reach. Moreover , in developed countries too ,it can be used to save electricity and getting some work out.

Concept :

It is based on very simple concept.This machines has pedals which are connected with steel ring inside the drum or box. When we cycle pedals to revolve the ring inside the drum with clothes and detergent ,it started to work like any electric machine as shown in Video below.

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Maya Pedal :



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Remote controlled aircraft

This mechanical engineering project is about the construction of a flying model of an air craft controlled by a remote control. The materials for construction include light weight materials like wood, plastic and foam.

The tasks included in this working project are:
1. Building the body of the RC plane.
2. Building the RC plane controls.
3. Building the Electronic controls.
rc airplane controls
The four primary controls of an RC plane, collectively called control surfaces, are:

1. Throttle
2. Elevator
3. Ailerons
4. Rudder

The flight of the plane is directed by the movements of these control surfaces. The control surfaces are controlled by small servo motors which are in turn controlled using the remote control.

Even when the plane is made it is not easy to control it without crashing your model several times. So it is better to take a flight video each time you try to fly it, so that if the model is destroyed beyond repair, you may be able to present the video during your project evaluation.

Useful references:

http://www.rc-airplane-advisor.com/
http://www.rc-airplane-world.com/rc-airplane-controls.html

Ball Sorting Mindstorms Lego Project

Ball sorting project is interesting one because it helps you to understand various important concepts of Robotics such as finding distance of objects , recognizing them , pick and drop them and things like that.

Useful Links :

Sort the Ball
NXT Sensors

Hardware Requirement :

Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0 which includes :

1) Ultrasonic sensor
2) Touch sensors: Lets the robot react to touch
3) Servo motors: Allows the robot to interact with the environment
NXT Brick: The programmable core that reads the sensors and controls the motors and things many more. You can buy it from any online store including amazon.com


Software Requirement :


NXT-G : is a graphical programming environment that comes bundled with the NXT. With careful construction of MyBlocks to encapsulate complexity, NXT-G can be used for real-world programming.

Complete Instruction and Details at Robin Newman's Page

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Talking Robots with Lego Mindstorms

From the days of "Small Wonder" TV show , I always wanted to have one robot which can talk and response just like human.To build one as Robotic Project is really interesting. This project is going to be very interesting and challenging because our robot requires not only speak capability but should have artificial intelligence to learn from its surroundings.

Architecture for talking robots consists of four main modules:

1) Dialogue system
2) Speech client with speech recognition and synthesis capabilities
3) Module for infrared communication between the PC and the RCX and
4) the program that runs on the RCX itself.

Useful PDF:

Talking Robots With LEGO MindStorms

Related Video :